People are hilarious when they age. And by "hilarious," I mean a magnificent, often tragicomic blend of denial, delusion and the occasional fleeting moment of self-awareness.
It’s a full-spectrum circus of human behavior and as a keen observer (and active participant, much to my chagrin), I find myself both baffled and endlessly entertained by our collective struggle against the inevitable.
There’s this odd linguistic gymnastics we perform around the subject. Take the word "mature," for instance. Oh, "mature." It’s draped over us like a sensible, beige cardigan, isn't it? When someone describes you as "mature," it’s often code for "all the fun has dried up, your wild days are behind you and you probably spend your evenings watching documentaries about artisanal cheese." It implies a quiet resignation, a dulling of the vibrant edges that once made you, well, you. As if the very act of accumulating years must, by some unwritten societal decree, strip away your capacity for spontaneous joy, inappropriate laughter or a sudden, ill-advised urge to roller-skate. I reject this premise entirely. My sense of humor, if anything, has only aged like a fine, slightly aggressive wine – more potent, less filtered.
And speaking of filtering, let’s talk about the master, the queen, the one and only Joan Rivers. Sigh, I miss her. She had this absolutely brutal, surgical precision when it came to calling out our bullshit. One of her favorite targets? People who insist on describing themselves as "such-and-such years YOUNG." Oh, the venom she’d spit, the glorious, unfiltered truth. Her response was always the same: "No, you’re old, you stupid bitch!" And she was right. Bless her magnificent, cynical heart. The performative suffix of "young" isn't fooling anyone, darling. It’s like putting a tiny, sparkly sticker on a very, very old banana. It's still a banana, and it’s still going to turn brown.
This brings me to the unwavering refusal of some people to admit their age. It’s a phenomenon I’ve observed countless times, usually delivered with a coy smile and a vague hand gesture that suggests their age is a state secret, guarded more closely than the launch codes.
"How old are you?" you ask, innocently. The response is rarely a straightforward number. Sometimes it's met with, "How old do you think I am?" It’s an evasive maneuver, a subtle deflection, a change of subject that would make a spy proud. The underlying philosophy seems to be, "If I don't say it, it can't be."
Bitch, please.
Let's get real for a second. You could chant "I am immortal" into a mirror while doing a handstand naked, and at midnight, you'd still tack on another day to your old, old life.
It's a strange thing, this denial, because everyone gets older. Everyone. Ultimately, we all get old. There is precisely nothing you can do about it. It’s like trying to argue with gravity or the rising sun. You can shoot more plastic and pig fat into your face (shoutout to my fellow Buff Boys) than a butcher’s shop at Christmas; you can stretch, lift, tuck and fill until you resemble a highly polished, slightly taut mannequin (RIP Joan) – but your birth certificate, that pesky little piece of paper, remains stubbornly static. You’re still going to be the age you are. You can fool some of the people some of the time, sure, but you can’t fool the calendar, and more importantly, you can’t fool your own creaking joints.
This brings us to the crucial distinction between "looking an age" and "being an age."
They are two completely different things. You might indeed be blessed with remarkable genes, or a particularly skilled dermatologist, or simply a perpetually startled expression that smooths out the forehead. And when someone says, "Oh my god, you look 10 years younger!" you might just take a victory lap around the office, basking in the glorious, fleeting warmth of that compliment. You might even start to believe it, internalizing that external validation as your new reality.
But then, the next morning, you try to touch your toes without properly stretching and your body sends you a sharply worded memo. A memo that details precisely which muscles have atrophied, which discs are protesting, and which ligaments have decided to stage a sit-in. The reality is, if you don't stretch beforehand, at your age, you will feel it the next day. Sometimes for three days. Your body doesn't lie to you. It's an honest, if somewhat brutal, chronicler of your exact vintage. It whispers (or screams, depending on the activity) the truth of every candle on your last birthday cake.
So, while you might feel it's threatening to "look your age" – which, again, millions, if not billions, of people have experienced and gone through the exact same utterly normal, biological process – it's really just you being a headcase. Let's call a spade a spade.
This fear, this neurosis, it's a personal hang-up, not a universal indictment. It's a self-imposed prison of perceived decline, when in reality, you're just... existing. Like everyone else who has ever existed for more than a couple of decades.
The sad reality is that no matter how much you brainwash yourself that you're young, young, young, it’s a process you have absolutely no control over. Aging is a current, and you're in the river. You can paddle like mad, you can splash, you can even put on a tighter swimsuit (Hi, Happy Bulge!), but the river is still flowing in one direction.
Maybe the humor lies not in fighting the tide but in learning to surf the ridiculous waves. Maybe it’s in acknowledging the absurdity of it all, laughing at our own vain attempts to trick time and embracing the wisdom (and occasional aches) that come with each passing year.
After all, if we can’t laugh at ourselves as we wrinkle, sag and forget where we put our keys, what’s the point of getting old, anyway? Except, of course, to finally be "mature" enough to stop caring what anyone else thinks. And that, my friends, sounds like a whole lot of fun to me.