071 Thinking about age

Those people look old!

I catch myself looking at folks and thinking “they look old.” After a brief moment of reflection, I realize that they are probably younger than I!

I have somewhat of an excuse—for much of my life, I have been the youngest.

My only sibling, my sister Joanne, is three years older so I was always the youngest in the house. Sometimes it worked to my detriment. My parents loved to tell the story of an early punishment ploy that they realized wasn’t working. They would tell my sister and me, “Tell us who did this or we will punish you both!” I didn’t quite have the logic worked out because I always confessed—no matter who the perpetrator.

But there were benefits of being the youngest. I remember my sister bitterly complaining when I received crinolines just a year after she did. She thought I should have been made to wait at least three years to be the same age as she was because she had desperately waited and begged for crinolines. I don’t know why we had to have those scratchy starched petticoats!

I was born at the end of October and my mother said she had to talk the school into letting me into first grade with other children born the same year. So I was usually the youngest in my class. It didn’t matter much because I was still taller than most of the other kids.

We were military brats, moving almost every two years. Luckily for me, a move from Virginia to South Carolina put me a year ahead so I jumped from Virginia high school freshman to South Carolina junior.

When I went off to Radford College, I was a sixteen-year-old college freshman. I didn’t have much dating experience, and one piece of advice I learned from my older and wiser suitemates was:

“You will never get a date if you don’t clean 

your hairbrush.” After all those years, I am still 

baffled by that one, but I do keep my hairbrush clean.

I ended up as the youngest editor of the newspaper in my sophomore year because the previous editor quit. So when I went from college to graduate school at Florida State University, I was twenty.

After receiving a Master’s degree in Library Science, I was offended by a library users who looked at me and asked me to “go get a real librarian.” 

No one has thought I was too young for the job in many years.

So I have finally relinquished my whiz kid status. I have learned that age is determined by your state of mind, not your chronology. With frequent visits to Florida, I have met so many active seniors who live full lives in their 80s and 90s even though some have severe physical limitations. They are now my models because they are young at heart.

Trish           

I am still the youngest of the Three Savvy Broads!