Poor Timing

I was reasonably attractive when I was a kid. I mean, not ugly at least. I thought I was horrid, of course, but that's how kids are. I didn't know that what makes you attractive is thinking you're attractive - that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyway, it didn't matter all that much. I'd pretty much resigned myself to unpopularity. I didn't have that 'charisma' that teenage girls find so desirable. I didn't brood; I wasn't a 'bad boy' or a James Dean type or anything like that. I wasn't dangerous or unknowable. I was friendly, lighthearted and affable. I had no chance whatsoever.

That was many, many years ago. Now if I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, it's the paunch and the white hairs that catch my attention. I've pretty much given up any chance I ever had of being 'sexy', no matter how I carry myself. And yet as the years have borne down on me, I've developed a kind of morose gloom about me; a kind of heavy-hearted Weltschmertz that would have rake in the babes had I had it in my younger, more attractive days. But that moment's lost: now my best chance is to be 'jolly' and loveable.

Why could I not get my personality and my body in tune with each other?