Reverse age spots while reading fine print

Can you reverse age spots while you sleep? a full page ad in a news magazine asked me.

“I don’t know, can you?” I asked back hopefully.

A woman with a smile as big as the Red River in flood stage fed that hope. She had a mouth filled with perfect, gleaming-white teeth, red lips, sparkling eyes and a face covered with perfect skin. One hand was splayed over her chest to better display its matching perfect skin.

There were close-up illustrations of her “before” and “after” hand. The “before” looked like my hand — enough age spots to play connect-the-dot. The “after” was perfect, not a freckle, a blemish, not one spot.

The product claimed to instantly remove age spots, sun spots and liver spots. “Restore your youthful glow!” a smaller headline urged with an exclamation point. “You won’t believe your eyes. Younger skin has never been easier.”

I hadn’t been so excited since I once found a brochure that showed a full-page photo of a woman’s face — half smooth, glowing, youthful — the other half wrinkled, sagging, dull.

Not only would that product get rid of age spots, it dramatically slowed aging, improved health, restored energy AND prevented the dreaded brown slime on the brain that brings on senility.

And, amazingly, not only would that cure, which had to be ordered from Canada, prevent the dreaded brown slime, it would improve eyesight, reduce unattractive cellulite dimples, eliminate chronic fatigue, joint pain, gray hair, counteract depression and diminished sex drive, reduce days of sickness, let you live 25 percent longer — AND make your wisdom teeth come back in.

I was all set to order a case until I happened to think: “What if I use this stuff and it does make me look like the woman on the brochure: one-half of my face old; one-half young?

Now here was a second chance to look 5, 10, even 20 years younger by reversing age spots while I slept.

I was dialing the number to ask for a trial supply when a tiny cautionary voice said, “Shouldn’t you read the teensy, tiny print first?

So I did. Under the ugly “before” and perfect “after” illustrations was this note: “Individual results will vary. These results are not typical.”

Results shown in the “after” photo are not typical? I could sense the excitement seeping out like air from yesterday’s party balloon. I searched on. In the line, “Instantly remove the appearance of age spots, sun spots, liver spots,” there was an asterisk after the word, “instantly.” I finally found the tiny blue asterisk at the bottom of the page in tiny blue print. It read: “When used as directed with water-resistant concealer.”

“What?” I yelled at the broadly smiling woman in the ad. “I have to use water-resistant concealer to cover up age, sun and liver spots in addition to your cream?”

So, if I order the cream and don’t use a concealer too, my hand would still look a lot like the “before” photo? The kind of hand you seriously consider sitting on in public?

“You know what?” I said grouchily to the wildly happy woman in the ad, “I think I’ll just eat chocolate instead.”

Mary McClure lives in Lawton and writes a weekly column for The Lawton Constitution.