Judging people's age

I used to think that I was good at guessing people's age. When the kids were little, I could guess the ages of toddlers within months, but as the kids have grown up my accuracy with that group has gone down tremendously, which is only to be expected. I spend less time amongst them. Half of me wants to add "praise the Lord," the other thinks "sadly."

Now older people have become a problem. I was just up at Sutton's waiting for a 77-year old I had never met. I looked over at one guy in a booth who I figured was 63 or so, or was he? Then another guy came to the door and at first I thought it could be him, but as the guy came in I realized that he was my age or younger.

Of course it's partly about the denial of aging and partly about my potential need for new glasses, no matter what the instruments at the optometrist's office say. For a while I think my internal age was mentally anchored somewhere around 22. It edged up over time, but Jack Benny may not have been far from the mark in saying that he never edged a day over 39.

Certainly I am a long way from giving up my practice of doing a two-footed jump over the net in the middle of each tennis match.