One morning not long ago I woke up drenched in my cottage in a beautiful historical district deep down in Dixie. I glanced around looking for water damage to my ceiling or windows or floor. Nothing. So, I ran to my bathroom mirror.

“OMG! I’m Methuselah!” I screamed horrified by my reflection.

Maybe my reaction was a bit dramatic even for a Southern girl. Obviously, I wasn’t the oldest man who ever lived or even a man… But the signs were clear. My youth had fled taking my hormones, my flawless skin, AND my bronze medal metabolism leaving behind slow hot flashes and fears of an impending decrease in bone mass.

I raced to my phone to call 911 to report my loss, but hung up afraid of laughter, not of the kind I seek. Surely, they’d had similar reports from Baby Boomers numbering in the hundreds of thousands. If not, I was sure they were too bogged down with serious crimes like murders and drug trafficking and parking violations to be of assistance.

Will you help me look for my missing youth? Here’s a personal profile to help you identify it if per chance you run across it…

My story begins with a romance, but not mine. Gene, an Army Counterintelligence Corps officer from Illinois, saw Madelyn, a steno for the FBI from Arkansas, and said, “I’m going to marry that girl.”

The drama of raindrops falling the afternoon of their April wedding did not cloud Gene and Madelyn’s dreams of “happily ever after” because, as Madelyn, a living first-line-of-songs-musical, often sings optimistically, “April showers bring May flowers.”

When my mother went into labor many days earlier than expected, my parents embarked on a thriller of an hour-long drive on Highway 5 that winds like a ribbon from their home in Little Rock to the Army and Navy Hospital at Hot Springs, Arkansas. There, on December 27, I arrived premature, weighing less than five pounds.

All good stories have twists and complications. The first one for my story is that I was missing fingers on my left hand. Instead of seeing me as a horror monster from a science fiction experiment gone awry, Madelyn and Gene loved me instantly, insisting I was their belated Christmas gift.

In my childhood, my father constantly encouraged me to laugh, instilling in me an ability to look for comedy in life.

My mother encouraged creativity and imagination by introducing me to fairy tale fantasy worlds with their giant hardships, assorted trolls and witches, helpful fairies and handsome, rescuing princes.

Growing up in beautiful Hot Springs, Arkansas, I envisioned myself as a princess, albeit a slightly flawed, yet funny one.

But my own personal handsome prince never rode up on a white horse – not at Hot Springs High School, nor at the University of Arkansas (Woo pig sooie! Go Razorbacks!); not at the Hot Springs Debutante ball, nor during any of my way too many working years.

Yes, at 60 plus, I’m single. Still. That only means there have been more great hysterically funny, tearfully sad, frighteningly scary, dramatically life changing, action filled adventures than one person deserves.

You’ll find stories from my life here at StoryDame in Mostly True Confessions, where I risk ripping off all masks to expose epic proportions of truth from my personal experience, past and present. Small episodic genre glimpses of my life – comedy, drama, thriller, horror, action/adventure, fantasy, science fiction, musical, myth, with a smidgen of romance – combine to form a much, much larger picture of a life-long tale.

Who and what influences, motivates, encourages, and inspires – or in a nutshell, fuels – my story life? Find out in I’m inspired by.

What enables my story life and the telling of it? Go to the Tools.

Looking for tips on aging? Check out Methuselisms.

Access the random thoughts of one sixty-year-old, single, Southern dame in StoryDame is sooo tweet!

Welcome to my story world. Come meet me on the bridge. It’s time to embark on a spine tingling, rib tickling, song inspiring, heart pumping epic journey!