Feeling young and old at every age

I’ve never really thought about age as a huge indicator of anything. It’s a digital representation of our time on earth, which is neither good nor bad, even if it is sometimes shocking to hear the number out loud. I recently turned 41, which sounds extremely odd to me, partly because I was already a teenager when my parents were my age and partly because, in most ways, I don’t feel like I have changed all that much since my 20s.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been plenty of times in my life I have presented as a prematurely old person, but it’s usually been on a mental or emotional level. Like when I was welcomed into bars with my older cousins once I got my license—not to drink illegally, but because I was widely accepted as the most responsible one in the bunch and the person most likely to make sure we all made it home alive. 

There was also Senior Week, a concept I now realize my 18-year-old self completely misunderstood. Whereas most people accepted it as a seven-day, adolescent rage at the beach, I (seemingly) viewed it as an opportunity to live out my best life as a grandmom in a retirement community making sure no one, anywhere, engaged in dangerous activity of any kind. Nothing to see here, just a house full of wild responsible girls having a ton of reasonable amount of debaucherous good, clean fun with Safety Patrol Vicchio on duty. The only remotely risky behavior that occurred that week happened outside my watchful care when a few of my friends went down to the boardwalk without me. Upon their return, I learned about some really great guys they encountered.

“How did you meet them?” I asked.

“They were yelling, ‘Show us your tits!’ to girls walking by,” one friend confessed.

“And that siren song made you think it was a good idea to get to know them better?” I questioned, horrified.

“You had to be there,” another interjected. “They just meant it as a joke.” 

I didn’t press the issue too hard because no one had been abducted during the incident, but a few minutes later, one of the girls meekly added that these two gentlemen would be over in an hour.

“Over where? Our house?” I asked, confused and panicked. “Complete strangers asked to see your boobs and you gave them our address? Are you out of your mind!”

Sixty minutes later, two dudes arrived on our doorstep, and although my mouth formed the sentence, “Hi, I’m Chandler,” I feel confident my eyes said, “I’m watching you. Don’t touch anyone, don’t think about touching anyone, or I will cut you. You will neither see nor touch boobs in this house.” Then I stayed up all night to make sure no one was roofied or touched or asked any follow-up questions regarding their breasts. 

By the time I was 25, I often felt like I was in my 60s, but that was largely circumstantial. As a young English teacher, I spent most nights and weekends grading papers and poring over texts with a fine-tooth comb, hoping to prevent my curious pupils from annihilating me with obscure questions I was unable to answer—a practice to which, I quickly learned, high school girls are prone.

Unlike these early incidents revealing my elderly emotional age, more recent incidents have made me feel old based on relative chronology. Take, for instance, the time I started my current job a few years ago, and I assumed several colleagues were around my age because we all got along well and had a lot in common. Then one day, about a year in, the topic of September 11 came up. After noting I was a senior in college when it happened, others expressed how they barely remember the event because, you know, they were in third grade at the time. Upon learning this information, I heard an audible record scratch sound in my head, which I kept to myself, fearing I might be the only one in the room who ever actually listened to records in real life.

Just a few weeks ago, another mathematics-based age realization happened while watching “The Bachelorette,” when my sister-in-law pointed out some of the contestants are actually closer in age to my 13-year-old niece than they are to us. Perceptive observation. Thanks, Karla.

Despite these times I have felt old emotionally or chronologically, I can’t say I’ve ever felt my age physically. Or I hadn’t, at least, until my boyfriend sent me to the spa for a facial on my 41^st birthday. That afternoon, what began as a promise of pampering, renewal and rejuvenation quickly turned into an indictment of decrepitness. 

It started with my esthetician, Lynn, asking me to tell her about my skin. This was a trap. No sooner had I described my relatively normal skin, than Lynn explained to me that my skin had the vibe of a dying, neglected plant. I wondered why she bothered asking the question if clearly she already knew the answer. I assumed it was a tactic designed to show me how out of touch I am with my own body (and perhaps make me more receptive to products aimed at curing my affliction).

I told Lynn my face does get extremely dry in the winter, especially this past year when we’ve all been wearing face masks wherever we go. The mask has definitely taken a toll, I told her. 

“You wear a softer face mask, OK?” she pleaded. 

“Sure,” I said, making a mental note to get rid of all my face masks made of sandpaper and glass shards. What did she think I’ve been wearing the last 14 months?

Once the facial began, I thought we were finished with the dry-skin talk, but we were just getting started. The initial cleanse was only meant to remove dirt so she could get a really good look at the dermal desert through her high-powered magnifying glass. “Aw,” she lamented with a long, drawn out pause, “your skin so dehydrated.” She said it as though my face was a litter of puppies I had left in the backseat of a car while running errands in August. As she mourned the loss of water in my epidermis, I lay there slightly uncomfortable giving her a moment with her grief. 

Minutes later, while trying to figure out what to do about my rapidly progressing crypt-keeper exterior, Lynn posed an odd question: “You have the phobia?” she asked.

The phobia of what? I wondered. Being asked trick questions by strangers? Definitely. Or was she asking me to list out all the things that scare me? Undoubtedly, that would take a while. And, quite honestly, I didn’t think my boyfriend paid for a treatment to last that long. 

“The claustrophobia,” she clarified, (thankfully) before I began rattling off a list of my deepest fears. 

“No, I’m not claustrophobic,” I said, though I instantly second-guessed if that was the wrong answer. Why did she want to know? Was she going to ask me to hop into a coffin to show me where I am headed and scare me straight (Jacob Marley style)? For a few moments I contemplated changing my answer to… maybe. 

Turns out she wanted to use a thick mask that covered everything but my nostrils. It was our best bet for salvaging whatever youthfulness I had left, so I agreed. A few minutes later, I understood why she asked the question. Feeling the weight of dense goo slowly drying on top of my face, I could see how someone who fears closed-in spaces would feel a little trapped.

I did my best to relax and breathe calmly while Lynn worked her magic, and as she slowly brought my visage back to that of well-rested late-30-something, I had time to think about all the ages I’ve embodied in one way or another over these 41 years. 

Suddenly I realized this might be the season of my life where I most closely match my actual age—in number, appearance and mentality. While in many ways, my body has been aging conventionally over the past four decades, my emotional age feels like it’s been gently Benjamin Buttoning—like I was born at 90, and my old soul has slowly reversed course over time—making me wonder where I’ll be in another four decades. Maybe I’ll eventually experience what it feels like to be 18, albeit when I’m 80. Who knows, by then I might be just immature enough to flash a few unsuspecting bystanders at Senior Week. Whether that happens at the beach or in a retirement community is yet to be determined.