Oh, here’s another stressor from tonight’s festivities: Red is about my age, and – like me – often gets mistaken for much younger. Both of us enjoy this, but she’s become obsessed with it. She’s started doing this thing when we hang out with younger people (which is a lot; our friends-of-friends are almost all in their late teens and early 20s) of dropping big hints about our ages and waiting for someone to put two and two together and be all flabbergasted by how old we are. Like, if some kid says “I first heard that one ’70s song last year, and I loved it!” she’ll be like “I loved that song back when it came out!” in this big innuendo-y tone. If her audience doesn’t pick up on her meaning, she’ll keep dropping shit like that into the conversation until the whole “OMG how old are you I thought you were like 19!!!!” epiphany happens.
Tonight, Red and her gf and I were making small talk with a girl we didn’t really know. We got to talking about video games (because of the loud nerds playing in the background) and agreed that our video game lust leveled off right around Tetris and never extended to complicated shooting and questing type games. Red interjected that she used to love some particular Cabbage Patch Kids game for Colecovision. The girl we didn’t know what like “…Oh, Cabbage Patch Kids had a game?” and Red was like “Yeah, it came out around 1984!” That didn’t get much of a reaction, but shortly afterward when Red and I popped over to the convenience store for drink mixers, she gloated to me, “Did you see how she hesitated when she asked about Cabbage Patch Kids? Probably way before her time.” SIGH.
I guess no more convenient opportunities for age-hinting came up because during dinner Red got desperate and just outright said to me, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I have a feeling there’s a bit of an age divide at this table…people over 25 on this side and people under 25 on that side.” At which point everyone volunteered their ages (that one girl was 32. The Birthday Boy was turning 25, which we knew. The other random guy at our table was 27. All the loud nerds were at a separate table) and nobody swooned at how very very young Red looked.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I don’t hide my age when I’m hanging out with young people. It’s just that I’ve had a few times where I felt like I was blending in pretty well, and people were talking to me and stuff, and then Red randomly “outed” us and suddenly the conversation got awkward. To a 19 year old, a person in their late 30s would practically seem like a parent; certainly not someone you could talk to like a normal person, or anything. Red probably thinks that when she confesses her age, the kids think “She may be old, but she’s cool!” but I think it usually works in the other direction: “I thought she was cool, but she’s old!” And anyway she makes such a big fuckin’ deal about it that it seems kind of alienating. I prefer to downplay any info that would reveal my age too blatantly and stick to topics of conversation that everyone can relate to.
I’d like to confront Red about her annoying habit, but for someone who consistently gives awesome advice to others, she’s remarkably un-self-aware. I think she would get angry and defensive and decide that I was being unreasonable – that I have some weird thing about revealing my age to people – rather than face the fact that she’s worried about becoming old and unattractive and assuages her fears by contriving to make people tell her how young she looks.
Yikes…yeah, that sounds uncomfortable, and I bet you’re right about the “age/cool” think being interpreted differently than she assumes. I think that like any frequently occurring behavior that serves primarily to focus (positive) attention on one person, it’s a self-centered thing that just bores or annoys others. Whether it’s age or fishing for compliments of other kinds, or steering the conversation to your hobby or achievements or whatever, really, it’s just rude and dull…let’s talk about something that EVERYONE is interested in, not just one person’s pet topic! I’d be annoyed too, especially as you are being dragged into this little bit of personal theatre in a supporting role without your consent. Have you ever mentioned this to her, not in an accusatory way but a “Hey, you know on Saturday night when ______? That seems to come up a lot and I’m not sure what the purpose is. And I’m a little uncomfortable being involved in it.” And maybe initiate a larger conversation about aging and women in our society that acknowledges her issues, both validates her fears and puts them in a larger context (i.e., not all about HER). I think the fact that you are increasing uncomfortable in these little vignettes is important and needs to be dealt with.
And I’m like you…I tend not to discuss my age around people, not because I’m hiding it but because in most cases, it really doesn’t fucking matter…I’m over 18 and under 65 and can do whatever I want. I would rather interact with people as “me” and let them draw their own conclusions rather than pre-judge me or automatically pigeonhole me into some stereotype. It is true that aging and attractiveness and “value” of women as they get older is a real issue, but I think we shouldn’t feed it or give it any more energy or attention that it already has!
I’ve never been able to talk to Red about this at all, even in the most indirect way. Those kinds of talks are hard to start with, but she in particular will resist being introspective at all costs.
Like…she has anecdotes about her past that change depending on what image of herself she’s trying to project. It’s increasingly apparent to me that she has almost no idea who she actually is, only how she wants to be perceived.
The only way I could possibly bring this up would be to make it strictly about me – about not telling people how old I am anymore. I can picture how that would go. I’d ask her to please not go flaunting how ancient I am in front of teenagers, and there’d be a long awkward pause (during which she’d probably think “Wow, Cowgirl sure does have issues about her age” and on a more subconscious level she’d think “Oh jeez…I do make a point of mentioning our ages all the time, don’t I? I hadn’t realized that. I don’t know what that means about me and I DON’T WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT and how dare Cowgirl invoke this sort of self-examination in me, anyway?”) and she’d go “…Okay…” with barely concealed resentment. She would precisely respect my wishes from then on and not mention my age. But she’d still use me as a foil for her own little routine, which (upon reflection) is actually the part I hate most. It’s one thing for young people at a party to realize how much older I am. It’s quite another for Red to make smug little cryptic remarks to me all night so everyone around us can see we’re in the SECRET AWESOME CLUB OF AWESOMENESS.
The easiest solution, I think, is to avoid hanging out with Red in groups, if possible. I don’t like big group outings anyway, so it’s fine. And if we do find ourselves hangin’ with a group of kids again, I’ll just change the subject every time she acts like a douchebag. You know, like when your kid is starting to make a bit of a scene in public and you know you can’t reason with them with so you distract them instead.