I've been pondering recently — why do people attribute so much to physical age? On one of my messenger profiles, I had to resort to saying, "please don't ask me my age" — not because I care if people know my age or not, but more so that I was sick and tired of being asked, especially 5 seconds into a conversation with someone new. So often, "How old are you?" almost surely means "Can I coax you into bed with me?" (the more brutal version, of course, "Can I fuck you?") But on the other hand, people seem to want to know your age before they decide whether they could fall in love with you, go out with you for dinner, or in extreme cases — talk to you.
I remember a 16 year-old boy who sent me a message out of the blue one day, who was afraid of revealing his age because he found that most people don't want to talk to him once they find out he's only 16. He was rather lovely — nice, polite and pleasant, and I think we'd even discussed law and politics.
And I remember a 60 year-old man who was so sure that I wouldn't want to talk to him because he was 60 and I appear to be much younger.
So what is it about age? If I tell you I am 26, what value would that give you in knowing what kind of person I am? Does it tell you how mature I am, if I am intelligent, or eloquent with my speech? No. Would that tell you how many partners I might have had, what TV shows I watch, and what I might do for a living? No. Being 26 means I have lived 26 years, but it does not tell you how I have lived those years, and how my years of existence has shaped me as an individual. It does not tell you what I ate for dinner, whether I went to a rave party on the weekend, if I am married, in a relationship, have children or intend to have children — yet it seems the majority of people I meet think that age can somehow shed light on these things, and as if these things about oneself matters. Does telling you I'm 29 tell you that I am "wife material", or indeed that I am looking to marry?
Okay, I am really 36. What does that tell you? That I should be married, have two kids at the day care and have a career? Have we come to live in a society so obsessed by demographics, and the idea of needing to be in "serious" relationships that we forget how to meet and get to know people as they are?
Well, I'll tell you that I'm old enough to be a cynic and young enough to lighten up, that's all.
Posted by sniffles at August 28, 2003 03:30 PM