Whether or not it was a blessing, for most of my life I looked younger than I was.
I had friends who were growing beards by their early 20s. Not only couldn’t I do that, I was in my early 30s before I had to shave more than two or three times a week. I remember going to an amusement park with friends when I was 32 or 33 and coming across the booth where they said they could guess your weight within five pounds or your age within two years.
The picture above was when I was 30, but I was still pretty close to that two or three years later. I challenged the woman in the booth to guess my age.
“Twenty-five.”
I took out my wallet and showed her my North Carolina driver’s license.
“You win.”
I still looked young for my age for a lot more years, although nobody was guessing 25 anymore. The next picture was my column logo when I worked in Reno at age 40.
Still young, I guess. I had two things going for me. I didn’t really have much gray hair and I didn’t have lines in my face. I still wasn’t shaving every day, although I was probably up to four or five times a week. Growing a beard still wasn’t in the cards for me.
Of course that was a long time ago. Nearly half a lifetime, and the first picture from Alexandria was nearly half a century ago. When I was 40, I was a year younger than the second of my two children is now.
Damn, where did all the years ago?
I don’t have a picture to show from age 49 or 50. There was a video feature about me on the local PBS station when I was a Southern California columnist. I’ve posted it before, so I’ll just link to it now. It’s the earliest picture of me with a decent beard, although still almost no gray hair.
At any rate, a lot of years have passed and most of them show in the lines of my face and the white hair in my beard. My picture on my Facebook account was a few years old, so I took a selfie the other day that showed how I look right now.
A wonderful friend from my college newspaper days, Tara Johnson, commented on the picture.
“Hello, old friend.”
All I could say in response was that the operative word there was “old.”