“Can I ask how old you are?”

Asking someone else’s age is a bold thing to do.  Not necessarily because it’s seen as rude (though I don’t know why, really).  It’s because people tend to ask, “how old are you?” without preparing themselves for an answer they didn’t expect.

I was at a meal recently with some people I didn’t know.  A woman of around 50 – I’m guessing, because I didn’t ask – slid into the seat next to mine.  Then, apropos of nothing, she started telling me about her terrible menopause.  “I’ve been having such trouble sleeping!” she moaned, before enthusing about a herbal supplement she’d been taking.  Then she told me all about the unshift-able weight she’d gained around her middle.

I ummed and ahhed in the right places, but I didn’t share any war stories of my own.  I didn’t know her, and I didn’t feel like it.  Not that there aren’t any war stories to tell, per se.  Menopause feels like you’ve been roughly kidnapped in the night, then dumped onto an arid patch of land with no resources: no home, no food, no company, no exit.  You’re bewildered at first, but then you realise you’ve got to roll your sleeves up and do stuff.  Build a home out of sticks and rubble.  Forage for food.  Look around for people.  Make that arid patch of land liveable, in whatever ways you can.

But I didn’t say any of that.  I merely empathised.  Then, just before our starters arrived, the woman narrowed her eyes and uttered those bold words.  “Can I ask how old you are?”  “I’m 49,” I said.  Immediately I wondered why I’d said that, because I’m not 49 until August.  Still, the woman exchanged a fleeting, flummoxed glance with a bespectacled middle-aged man sitting opposite us, who’d been listening in.  “Well… you look good on it!” she stammered eventually.

Was she surprised at how young I look?  People used to be.  I had a dentist’s appointment on my 38^th birthday, and when I came out the receptionist looked shocked. “I’ve just seen your date of birth!” she gushed.  “Honestly, you look like a teenager!”  When I took Russian lessons at weekend college, I was befriended by two giggly 21-year-olds who stopped talking to me when they realised I was 32.

Then I hit 40, and everything seemed to catch up.  No-one was surprised by my age anymore: in fact, people started assuming I was older.  It was fascinating.  To me, not much had changed, but to the world at large there had clearly been a major physical shift of sorts.  So no, I don’t think this woman was surprised by how young I look.  I think she’d just prepared herself for a different answer, whatever that might have been.  That’s what tends to happen; we ask personal questions like “how old are you?” only when we think we know the answer already.  I see it happen all the time when people ask me if I’ve got children.  My “no” throws them, because they’d been expecting “yes”.  “No” is uncharted territory, as is an age you weren’t expecting.  A different life story, maybe.  Reasons that might be embarrassing, if probed for.

Of course, the worst answer anyone can give when asked their age is, “Guess!”  This is usually accompanied by a smug smile; one that assumes you’ll be guessing much younger.  I got caught out by this at a friend’s party once, except I hadn’t asked the question in the first place.  Someone introduced me to a dark-haired woman in leopard-print leggings, who immediately barked: “People can’t believe how old I am when I tell them!  Go on, guess!”  I was in my twenties at the time, which meant I hadn’t mastered the art of knocking a few years off whatever you think the answer is, so I honestly told this woman she looked “about 35”.

I don’t know what the real figure was, because she got upset and stormed off.