Act Your Age: Another Love Story with Life

• Posted on 20th March 2016
• in divorce & remarriage, Entertainment, entertainment books, Hollywood memoirs, Love Story, New York City
• by Ben

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I seem to be on a streak of

Love Story

blog posts, about life itself. Maybe it has something to do with how long ago I was born. So what’s wrong with that?

Probably from the time I was in high school and maybe even before that – like most young folks – I was often told: “act your age”. Given that I was a good boy I most likely tried to comply with that order in the early years. Like most kids I wanted to appear mature.

This idea is in the front of my consciousness today due to a recent query I received from HARO. That acronym stands for “Help A Reporter Out”, an email service used by those of us who are marketing our products on the internet, in my case; Memoirs. On weekdays I get three emails, each containing a categorized list of requests for submissions to a wide variety of publications, from book authors to TV shows, on a wide variety of subjects. The one that prompted this essay was from the New York Post asking for people who didn’t “look their age” to send a picture. I sent this one:

I told the reporter I had recently turned 80 and asked what she thought. She thought I fit the criterion so I went down to The Post, met and talked with the reporter then a photographer shot some photos and I went home. Here’s the article. Turns out I got short shrift and no plug for my books bit it was fun. Below is one of their pics that wasn’t in the paper.

This experience really got me to thinking about chronological age – the number of years that have passed since one’s birth – and what I’ll call “attitudinal” age. Obviously there is a multitude  of complex factors that combine to create the age related appearance some of which are not completely within any person’s control: genetics, general health, exercise; all that sort of stuff. But I believe that attitude (and behavior to match it) are the major contributors to looking younger than one’s years.

One anecdote (which didn’t make it into my third book, my love story Waiting for Elizabeth, but should have) illustrates the point. At around 65 or 66 I was in an elevator with my bike when a guy got on. He said he also used to ride his bike to work but quit when he got too old. I asked when that was and he replied, “When I hit fifty.” I spent the rest of the elevator trip thinking about whether or not I should tell him my age. Motivated by kindness, I didn’t.

So all you (healthy) youngsters in your 50s and 60s, take it from me. You’re as old as you act.

If you’d like to read my memoirs you can get all three of them here.

Tags: Annie Wermiel, Doree Lewak, NY Post