A Gray Reality Check

In many ways it's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I've lived for half a century. I could easily almost believe that we're still the young couple in this photograph.

Except for the fact that I creak and groan while working out all the stiff and aching joints after I get up in the morning.

Except for the fact that I find 10:00 to be incredibly late in the evening and an acceptable bedtime.

Except for the fact that he one of us has a lot more wrinkles now.

And he one of us has a lot more gray hair now.

Actually, we both have gray hair, but I started coloring my grays before they became too prominent on my head. Since my gray hair isn't so pronounced, I can pass for about 8-10 years younger than I actually am.

My kids used to announce my birthday--and my age--in their Sunday School class. Since I didn't want to stop celebrating my birthday, I decided to do the next best thing. I taught my kids to lie about my age. No matter what age I was turning, they would say I was thirty-six. Sometimes they tried to say I was twenty-eight, but I'd always correct them because we needed to keep it within the confines of believability.

 Or so I thought.

I'm beginning to suspect that I'm looking more and more my age every day. Some of it has to do with looking in the mirror, but some of it comes from subtle clues from others.

For instance, I get my hair cut from a lady whose husband used to be in the ministry. We often chat of ministry-related things while she's cutting my hair. This past summer, she gave me a little break on the price of a haircut. It was only $3.00 off, but still it seemed like a kind gesture from one pastor's wife to another. At least, it did until I noticed on their pricing board that what she charged me was the senior rate.

I still choose to believe she was simply being kind.

A few weeks ago Stephanie was in town, and she and I decided to take her kids out to lunch one day. We each paid for our own, but I thought my price must have been miscalculated because it was less than I thought it would be.

And then I noticed the cashier had given me a senior discount.

That really hurt, even if it did save me money.

I've been noticing more and more gray peeking through in between colorings, so I've finally decided it's time to face reality. I'm going to raise my head and proudly claim my experience and wisdom. I've earned the grays and the wrinkles and I might as well claim them with pride. I've got six grandchildren, for pete's sake! I know I can't pass for thirty-six any more, so now I'm going to claim to be forty-two.

So what if I'm still shorting myself by almost ten years? If I jump from thirty-six to my real age, I'd have aged fifteen years in three hundred and sixty-five days and that's just not realistic.

Plus, no one ever claimed I was good at math.

What about you? What age do you look?