Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Question of the Day 61


How old were you when you began actively comparing your age to other people's?

By that, I mean looking at someone famous and thinking that person is younger than me? Or looking at someone famous-and-old and thinking that person isn't that much older than me.

I never did that much before, but since I turned 40, I've caught myself more and more making those comparisons. I read in an article the other day that Portia de Rossi is 36, and I almost choked on my oatmeal...

... and you'll say that maybe part of the problem is that I'm eating oatmeal, but my oatmeal isn't "Old Man Oatmeal." I mix in peanut butter and cereal and maple syrup, so that the oatmeal (much like lettuce in a salad) is merely a conveyance for the stuff I really want to eat...

... because I couldn't believe that Portia de Rossi was younger than me. But then, I heard an interview with Jesse Ventura yesterday (remember him?) and he said he's 58, and all I thought was: Boy, Jesse Ventura isn't really that much older than me.

And that depressed me, for some reason. Then I tried to cheer myself up by thinking but, then again, he is 18 years older. It didn't work, though, because I realized that I'd mentally lumped Everyone 40 and older into one category, which meant that probably everyone was doing that, so that no matter what I thought, the entire world would be putting me and Jesse Ventura into the same "Old" category.


1 comment:

lisapepin said...

I've been comparing ever since I turned thirty and I do it more and more with every year that passes. In fact, at the gym recently I caught a glimpse of a magazine cover splashed with paparazzi photos of Jennifer Aniston trying to celebrate her birthday in privacy. My first thought was, "Jennifer Aniston is two years older than me? That's cool. She still looks gorgeous. Maybe there's hope after all." Then it occurred to me that no matter how old Jennifer and I both get, I will never look that good. You could compare Jennifer Aniston at 60 with me at 20 and she will still come out the winner. So then I got mad. "Stupid bitch! Go be forty and fabulous on some other planet!" I ran two miles in record time that day.