Sunday, April 20, 2008

Age Old Stuff

So I just heard from someone that one of our friends in the group has been "concealing" her age. And it's not one of those "hide a few months to still be a teenager" kind of concealing. If rumors are to be believed (which I'm tempted to) - she has been hiding her age by a good two years . This made me wonder - are we really that old??? Has the grey hair finally caught up with the grey cells?? Should we be hiding our age too?? Hmmmm!

A lot has been said abt the enigma concerning the fairer sex's age and the darker (?) sex's salary. We are now part of a society where it's ok to flaunt breast sizes but uncouth to ask a woman her age. So I shall comply to these societal norms and not delve into the topic of women and their age but instead deal with the issue from a male perspective.

To be perfectly honest, men lie abt their age too and here are some classic situations when they do so:

1. The Boy Genius - "I was sixteen when I finished undergraduate chemistry," a friend of mine would boast. Screw you! We all knew that you turned sixteen on your twenty first birthday - so shut the baby mouth up! This btw, is something very "male"! A lot of men love to reduce their ages to make their very ordinary accomplishments sound brilliant. "My son knew how to spell when he was three," the father would boast. "Very good! Too bad you dint know how to count then - didya?"

2. To Eliminate the Creep Factor: The sweet girl sharing dinner with you claims she is twenty two. You are twenty nine. You know your grandmom and grandpa had an age gap of sixteen years and that didn't stop them from providing you with innumerable uncles and aunts. But still! 29 vs. 22 - naaaah! "So how old are you?" she asks you while licking the sauce from her upper lip using her tongue. That's it. It's lie lie time. "I'm twenty .... twentyyyyy six" you say. You see the girl taking a moment to do the mental calculations herself - she adds her nicely hidden two years to her advertised age and decides that 26 vs. 24 is not all that bad. Everybody is happy!

3. Maturity Oozes: Barring faking age to get into night clubs or to buy yourself that much needed beer, there is only one other time that I can think of when men actually increase their age and the reason is simple - to sound more mature and to be taken seriously. "So you think that India should disinvestment even more? How old did you say you were?" your colleague asks you with that all familiar tone of sarcasm. "I'll be turning thirty this year," you say without a blink, calmly adding the two years to your age that my friend has been letting go :) "Wow! You look a lot younger," the colleague replies, almost sounding apologetic. The same trick is used when you meet a woman who fits your bill but is a few years older than you.

So you get bold, turn a lil old and a lie is told. :-)

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WHEN I STAND BEFORE GOD AT THE END OF MY LIFE, I WOULD HOPE THAT I WOULD NOT HAVE A SINGLE BIT OF TALENT LEFT, AND COULD SAY, " I USED UP EVERYTHING YOU GAVE ME "