QUESTION

How old would you be if you didn't know your age?

There's oft a disparity- between years lived and that place in your head where you live perennially unchanged or, paused in a particular decade. (In fact, I altered my background image here recently to better reflect this.)

I think about this a lot. Age is a number. My body tells me uncontroversial truths but my mind- it rebels. Fuck the sags and wrinkles, I mostly think of me as far, far younger. (Evidenced by my busted wrist last year, playing "You can't catch me" round and round the toy-strewn room with my nephew.)

Do we park our mental age at what we assume our peak? I am guilty of this- if this be guilt. Was a time I walked into rooms and owned them. The heady days of physical perfection and mental liberty... before time did its "I'll show you who's the boss!" thing.

I'd be thirty. (Okay, some days I can't quite pull this off and must resign myself to the fact a couple of bones creak and my back is on fire and I am far, far closer to the end of things than the beginning.) But mostly, I am thirty.

Where on the age spectrum would you sit?