Wednesday, May 06, 2009

The 40-year-old version

Recently I put a photo of myself up on howoldareyou.net, to see what I'd get. Because I was looking for as recent a picture as I could find, I used this one from the Philippines:



Sure, it's probably not the greatest photo ever taken of me. The results so far have rated me as looking like I'm 40, though, which really bothered me at first.

But then I was looking in the mirror and thought that if I saw myself walking down the street, maybe I would think I was 40. (Although I am notoriously bad at guessing ages.) And then I thought some more about it: I turn 27 this year (!) and have a history of people thinking I look ten years older than I am. 37 and 40, obviously, aren't too far apart.

And then I kind of annoyed myself by thinking that I will turn 40 in August of 2022, which is only a little over 13 years away. Which is a lot, sure, but 13 years ago I was about to start high school, and high school does not seem like it was that long ago (at least in some ways).

Anyway. I do wonder - if I had used this picture, would they still have said 40?