The morning after the wedding I walked into the local farmacia. The kind of place where the woman behind the counter has been working there for 50 years and knows every man in town by name.
I asked her one question: "what do most men here use on their skin?"
She didn't hesitate. Pointed to a low shelf near the back wall. Four or five creams in plain packaging, restocked quietly for decades.
Every single one had cold-pressed Italian olive oil near the top of the ingredient list. The same stuff you cook with. I almost laughed. But the pharmacist wasn't joking - and neither were the faces of every man over 60 in that town.
I bought the top one and handed it to my dad that night. He rolled his eyes, but he'd run out of arguments - he'd already tried everything else back home.
He started using them that night. Twenty seconds before bed. Nothing complicated.
Within a few weeks something was actually shifting. Nothing dramatic. But real. His skin looked less tired. The heaviness around his jaw had softened. He looked like a man who'd slept well rather than a man who hadn't slept properly in two years.
But the Italian men around me had been using this stuff their entire lives. My dad didn't have decades, there was no point in him being wrinkle free at 90 years old. He needed something that worked in months, not years.
I went back to my room and started reading.
