Klondike Bar! Remember that old commercial?
What would you give to look younger? Some might consider facial creams, diets, or Botox® injections.
On my way to work yesterday, the morning show hosts were talking about a procedure being done in South Korea that involves injecting skin from cadavers into living people’s faces to make them look younger. It was touted as the mythical Fountain of Youth. One of the hosts asked, “Is that from dead people?”
Duh! The last time I checked, there are no living cadavers.
Reportedly one patient who underwent the South Korean treatment without sedation reported, “It hurt like h---.”
Duh! Sedation was invented for a purpose. Hopefully this person will learn, as did a relative of mine who endured a colonoscopy without sedation, that “being put to sleep” is a good thing when it comes to invasive medical procedures.
Once again, my twisted mind started overthinking. Is there a great difference in the concept of using cadaver skin for anti-aging as to undergoing skin drafts to repair damage due to burns? When a person who undergoes the “cadaver anti-aging treatment” passes away, can the skin from the original cadaver be utilized a second time for anti-aging purposes? If so, I guess the skin could be considered third generation.
The radio morning show hosts revealed that there are plans to introduce the “cadaver anti-aging treatment” into the United States next year.
When I was in high school, English teacher Kennith Venable had us read “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”, a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the story, the elderly Dr. Heidegger finds the mysterious Fountain of Youth. He calls in four of his best friends to try the elixir. The younger his friends get, the sillier they get, just as they were when young. The story ends with the rowdy group spilling the vessel of water and returning to their old age. Dr. Heidegger states at the end of the story:

“Yes, friends, ye are old again,” said Dr. Heidegger, “and lo! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well — I bemoan it not; for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it — no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me!”
(Source: Google us-static.z-dn.net › files › d55 Retrieved July 24, 2026)

I will admit, as I get older, I stress over the effect gravity seems to have on my facial features. However, I am not a person who seeks any type of invasive medical procedures unless they are necessary to relieve unbearable pain or circumvent death. I suppose if my looks go too far south that I can do as a character in another of Hawthorne’s short stories, “The Minister’s Black Veil”. Pastor Hooper, for a reason never known to another mortal, decided at one point in his life to cover his face with a black veil. He wore the veil to his grave, as revealed in what to me are the most beautifully written words in American literature:
While his auditors shrank from one another, in mutual affright, Father Hooper fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse, with a faint smile lingering on the lips. Still veiled, they laid him in his coffin, and a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave. The grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial-stone is mossgrown, and good Mr. Hooper’s face is dust; but awful is still the thought, that it moldered beneath the Black Veil! (Source: https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrigUeKfmNqKAIAsowPxQt.;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZ…- Retrieved July 24, 2026)

Pastor Hooper’s action might seem eccentric, though the widespread wearing of masks during COVID-19 renders it less so in our generation.
I would love to take to the grave, unaltered by science as much as possible, every body part that God gave me. I suppose that if facial features become so hideous as to offend others that I, like Pastor Hooper, could resort to wearing a veil.
The hard truth is that despite every effort to the contrary, every living human ages every day. There is a time appointed to each of us to leave this world, and, though we do all we can to preserve our flesh, nothing can avert that eventuality. We will all go to our graves (or urns), some well-preserved, others veiled, others as dust.
Dear Reader, I leave you with the Question of the Week and some thoughts on aging that I have received over the years in my email inbox.

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 94
Why was the man on two diets simultaneously? (ANSWER: He wasn’t getting enough food on one diet only.)

QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 95
If being young is beautiful, what is being old? (See the next “Mincey’s Musings” in historicunioncounty.com for the answer.)

FROM MY EMAIL WORLD

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."—Forrest Tucker

“The older I get, the better I used to be.”—Lee Trevino

"I don’t plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face-lifts until my ears meet."—Rita Rudner

If you marry for looks alone, you will spend your entire life living with a stranger once the paint fades.

"At my age ‘getting lucky’ means walking into a room and remembering what I came in for." – Unknown