MY REAL AGE

Another birthday come and gone and I got to thinking, how old am I? I mean, I know how old I am, but how old am I really. Someone once asked “Would you know how old you are if you didn’t know how old you were?” My answer has always been "29" but my wife constantly disabuses of me of that delusion. I have gone through life whistling past the grave yard thinking I will beat the odds. So I finally found the courage to take the Real Age Test. Harking back to my college days I thought it might be a good idea to use Cliff Notes to bone up for the exam. Back then I was the master of pulling “all niters”. I foolishly thought a quick review would make up for all these years of decadence. After all, the site promised to help me live life to the youngest. No such luck.

I promised myself I would be honest, no cheating, at least not anything I could be held accountable for if I was compelled to share the results with my wife. We don’t see eye to eye on anything related to diet and exercise. She is a nutrition-nazi who would gladly trade me for a new treadmill. I pointed my browser to the real age site, kept my fingers crossed, and proceeded to take THE TEST.

After a false start, (there goes the no cheating promise) I clicked away. The folks at Real Age were not impressed, deciding I was leading a challenging life and was sure to expire sooner rather than later. Always one to look for the silver lining in any cloud I proceeded to experiment with some of the questions. With the interactive features of the test I was able to “manage” my answers, but could I squeeze out a few more years? With fingers crossed, to absolve me of the no cheating promise I had foolishly made, I “adjusted” some of my answers to see how many extra years I could con out of the mad scientists who devised this monstrosity.

My first adjustment was a failure; eating less doesn’t seem to be an option, at least not a very rewarding one, a pick up of only five months; hardly worth it. After a few more poor results I finally hit pay dirt - I discovered I don’t drink enough. Lo and behold, drinking more, much more in my case, would only cost me three months! I will gladly give up those three months for a few more bottles of cabernet.

Not wanting to waste another day I poured a tumbler of just what the doctor ordered and tried to find another site, one that would be more friendly, one whose results I could share with my wife. The folks at the search engine poodwaddle came up with just the place I was looking for. I’m not including the link as I need to keep this to myself for confidentiality purposes, I can’t chance a digital trail, but I can report this website’s results were just what I was searching for – 22 years better to be exact. Not wanting to gloat, I decided to take a subtle approach and taped the printed results to the aforementioned treadmill.

I would love to be a fly on the wall when my wife sees that note but I won’t be around, I’m heading out to the store to meet my friends, Ben & Jerry. I’ll save the rest of the cab bottle for later. I might need it.