Crazy little thing called Age.

I like to think that age is just some number; an indication of the number of years one has traversed the human condition, and precious little else of significance is weighted within. It would explain why I seldom feel like a bone fide "grown up" despite that I'm nearing the {holy shit} 39th year since my birth, or that I have a child that just last week reached the {holy shit x 2} 20th year since his own. I have a friend that is in her 60s, and was just today flirted with by someone not much older than my 20 year old. And it's exactly at that point where my brain puts on the screeching halt of the brakes and calls me a hypocrite.

It's not because I have any interest in being flirted with by anyone other than my spouse, (I don't), but because my first thought is immediately "he's just a baby." It's some weird part flattery and a whole lot of feeling like a pedophile. And I didn't even do anything wrong! Was so oblivious to the whole affair that it wasn't until I got home with my goods and receipt that I realized that there was a phone number scrawled across a scrap of paper. It made me laugh. Out loud. And it also makes me genuinely feel like a great big jerk that I can't take a compliment without dissecting it and trying to find the ulterior motive waiting to jump out and bite me.

Dismissing age as just a number, though, erases the actual experience of all of that living that has happened in that span of time. Things both big and small that conclude into the  amalgamation of the person that we are becoming. Certainly, I would be offended if someone dismissed me as "just a baby" because I am arbitrarily younger than they are. That they would be moved to laughter because I found them attractive? Wow. That sucks. I have lived a lot in my not-quite-(gulp)-forty years; I have a lot to offer, damn it! That said, I often wonder if I will always feel like a kid. Am I the only grown up that feels like a kid tossed unceremoniously out into the world, just trying to keep my head above the rising tide of numbers gathering below me? And do I even *want* to feel every second of those numbers? [No. No, I don't.]

Here's the thing, though: when it comes to matters of more-than-friends, I think that's where the water starts getting murky for me, and I guess lots of other folks. My mom once freaked out, just a couple of years ago, in fact, that I find some guys her own age attractive. "He's an old man!" I volleyed back, " Who cares. LOOK AT HIM." (Rob Lowe, you still have it; I have thought so since I was a pre-teen.) But speaking of pre-teens, do I want my own daughter to ever entertain thoughts about guys her mother's age at any point in her life? Oh Hell No! I'm totally fine with riding the hypocrisy train where that's concerned.

Oh well, it is all what it is. The human condition is equal parts hilarious and horrifying. I guess most of the time I'm just glad to be along for the ride.