I hardly remember what I was doing 5 seconds ago. Sure, that’s more complicated than a number, and I think about my age rather frequently so remembering it is rather easy, but storing anything for a year and remembering it when I haven’t thought about it for a while is difficult.
I usually add 50 to their birth year and add/subtract the remainder from that date. So for 1965 I’d say they were 50 in 2015, so that makes them 58 in 2023. Makes the mental math easier for me.
But I never even realized that was how I did it until I saw your version written out and was like “huh, that’s really confusing”
I was born in January 2000. For a very short period of time I don’t know how old I am or what year it is, but then the rest of the year is pretty easy after that.
As someone who is well out of the range where people need to ask for ID when I want something, I don’t concern myself with my age and frequently forget since nobody asks.
On official forms, they want to know my date of birth, not my age. Everyone I know socially, doesn’t care or already knows an approximation of it, thus I’m never asked. All my work colleagues are interested in is getting the job done, not how many years I’ve been in the workforce/how many years till I get to retirement age/whatever.
I don’t think about my age for more than a few hours a year at most. I don’t even celebrate my birthday. So the years come and go, and I think about how old I am so little that I often don’t even know how old I am.
You’re not wrong that it’s not hard to remember, but when you think about it as little as I do, you tend to lose track… So when someone asks me how old I am, I often don’t reply because I’m too busy doing math in my head to try to figure it out, quietly hoping they’ll move on from the question and I won’t have to answer it.
Yeah it’s hard to calculate when reality sets in. There’s also a bit of reluctance from me as a lot of expectations follow me when I reveal my age even when I don’t look like how old I am. It’s like suddenly you feel that you are not so welcome in some conversations any more or people keep you out of their circles because they presume that you don’t fit in.
I’ve gotten way past that and while realising that my body isn’t what it was physically 20 years ago, I’m treating age as just a number and if one has a problem with that, it’s really their problem not mine 🙂
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