Stuff That I’ve Noticed #8 – Act Your Age

Act Your Age! Who, me?

This piece has something to do with how long ago I was born and advice most of us have been given since early childhood. Were you not often told: “Act your age”? I certainly was and given that I was a good boy I most likely tried to comply with that order in the early years. But as the candles on my cake began to multiply, not so much. And with yet another natal day fast approaching – four days as I write this morning – it seemed an appropriate topic.

This idea was in the front of my consciousness a couple of years ago due to a query I received from “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 morning, midday and afternoon 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 question that prompted the original version of this essay – a blog post two-and-a-half years ago, expanded and rewritten here – was from the New York Post asking for people who didn’t look their age to send a picture. I sent this one:

Author Ben Bryant 2015

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

(Annie Wermiel/NY Post)

This experience really got me to thinking about chronological age – the number of years that have passed since one’s birth – and what I call “attitudinal” age – the way one behaves and appears to others.

Obviously there is an abundance of complex factors that combine to create the age related appearance some of which are not completely within any person’s control such as genetics and general health. Then there are the controllables such as exercise and diet; all that sort of stuff. But I believe that attitude and behavior to match it are the major contributors to appearing younger than one’s accumulated years.

One anecdote (which didn’t make it into my third book, Waiting for Elizabeth, but should have) illustrates the point. At around 66 or 67 I was in an elevator with my bike when a considerably younger 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 chose not to do so.

All you (healthy) youngsters in your 50s and 60s, take it from me. You’re as old as you act. So no matter who tells you to act your age, fuhgeddaboudit!

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