The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
— Oscar Wilde
Marketing researchers have known for decades we think we look 10 or more years younger than we really are.
The discrepancy is due to the workings of a psychological defense mechanism against anxiety—anxiety over our inevitable physical and mental decline.
I suffer more than my share of that anxiety, so my defenses work on overtime and I think I look... great!
Until I pass any plate-glass window.
That's when my defense mechanism breaks down.
But generally speaking, I like to think I'm openly gray and proud of my chronological age.
No age fabrication for me!
I'm authentic through and through.
Besides, I like a senior discount now and then.
The trouble arises when I get away from plate glass for a while and my defense mechanism kicks back into gear.
I go outdoors in flip flops and a tee-shirt when it's 20 below; eat cookies and candy like a famine is coming; and drive like Mad Max when I'm cut off on the highway.
These are not the behaviors of a 70-year-old.
Comedian Jack Benny had the solution.
He perpetually claimed to be 39, because "there's nothing funny about 40."
There's even less funny about 70.
Maybe I'll go for 29.
That was a very good year.
Who cares if I'm gray?
Or grey, for that matter.
Gray, ICYMI, can also be spelled grey.
The former is just the American English spelling of the British English grey, meaning the "color between black and white."
Despite our preference for gray, grey is used a lot in the US.
There's Grey Poupon, Grey Goose, "Grey’s Anatomy," and, of course, Fifty Shades of Grey.
But that's another story.
