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I've just read Kerstin's thoughts on ageing and got stuck on this quote:

"When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old."
~ Mark Twain

Hm. OK, according to that quote, I've been getting very old from age 24! Only I haven't.

From about age 14 to 18 I was 18 to everybody, quite handy really, as it allowed me to go out without having to show any ID to prove my age. I think this was simply because I am tall (1.8m, or 5′9″ for those not familiar with metric measurements) and was so very early on.

From 18 to about 24 or so, I was still 18 for everybody. At that point it started to get boring, having been 18 for 10 years and not progressing…! I wanted to be taken seriously according to my age: haha, little did I know that that never happens with anybody who is at least five years older than you are.

From 24 onwards I have (slowly) aged but never caught up on my real age. I am 42 now and people still look at me in complete disbelieve when I tell them how old I am. Most seem to think that I am early to mid thirties. This is very flattering but at the same time I am so used to this reaction, that it doesn't really move me much any more. Only when I see people my age who look a lot older than they should I am surprised and I wonder why we are all so very different. I would love to think that my outside youthfulness is due to good health (not eating too much, hardly any sweets, no smoking, no exaggerated sun bathing), but to be honest it's simply in my genes. My parents both looked younger (and still do in case of my mum / my dad died ten years ago) and my sister also looks about ten years younger than she is. It has nothing to do with sports (I'm a total couch potato, apart from cycling for transportation in the Netherlands) and I actually was quite partial to drinking beer before I had Yannick (mind you, I'm cheap drunk). OK, of course my body ages, I can see certain things that I didn't have when I was 24, but to be honest ageing is very gentle to me, and even the pregnancy didn't leave any traces apart from a softer belly. I am very lucky indeed! Now don't forget that it's just the outside. Inside I am getting just as forgetful as anybody else around this age. Um, what was my name again?

Of course there is that one tell tale give-away that tells everybody without fail how old you are. Any guesses?

But I can still be surprised by other people: last week I met a match, another mum astonished me completely by telling me that she was 41 and I had not expected that at all! Using my own stereotypes I thought she was about 32 or something as all the mums I met over here are around that age. And of course she looked that age too. I think we both looked quite sheepish looking at each other!

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