How Old Am I?

The older I get, the more difficult it is to grasp how old I actually am.

Two anecdotes:

I have this marvelous handyman who did beautiful work in my garden, and got highly pissed off about one of the upstairs neighbors dropping cigaret butts out the window that land in my garden. He told me that if he ever comes across this neighbor, he is going to confront him, and refer to me as his aunt.

I was a little taken aback because "aunt" implies that I am a generation older than he is. When I was telling Mary this story, she asked how old the handyman is... and I said... "I guess around 40"... and in Mary's semi-smirking "uh huh" the truth slapped me upside my head. I am old enough to be his aunt! 

I have to say I think of us as contemporaries.

A New York Blue Cross/Blue Shield commercial is running constantly. In it, a couple are in their living room with band music playing somewhere in their home. The man asks the woman if she has called Blue Cross/Blue Shield yet, and she says no because of the loud music.

The man, who I have to say is "old" but hot, gets up and you think he is going to tell the people to stop playing the music. When he walks in the room, the band turns out to be his grand daughter and her friends and the grand daughter apologizes for the loud music and he indicates she should hand him her guitar. She sort of hangs her head in shame and hands over the guitar and he straps it on and starts playing "Born to be Wild" to the young folks' great delight.

I have to say I hate that it's comical that the "old guy" is playing "Born to be Wild" -- oh, I forgot to mention that the grand daughter says, "Sorry, grandpa" and it just clunks in my ear. She sounds like she's being sarcastic -- like you'd yell at a slow moving car,  "Hey, move it Grandpa!" But she's not. She is simply calling him Grandpa.

I look at this man -- and he is attractive -- and he looks young and vibrant and robust to me and I can't believe he is being marketed as a cool senior citizen looking for a good deal on some addition to his Medicare. How old are we?

PS: I did recently get some reprieve from this. I had bought groceries, including a six-pack of beer for when Mary and her sister were here in case we wanted beer. When the groceries were delivered, I usually have to sign for them to show they were delivered, and I did that, and then the delivery guy hands me something else to sign that looks like an affadavit and begins something like "I hereby swear that..." and I am thinking what the hell is this? But it was to swear that I was over 21 years old. So that made me laugh -- hadn't been asked to prove I was over 21 in a very long time.