OVERCOMING FEAR
I Always Tread Lightly When Guessing a Woman’s Age
Too young is far better than too old
How do you like guessing someone’s age, especially if you must let them know what your guess is? What if they are young and you guess way too old? Or the other way around. In most cases, it can be awful to be off too much.
In my first job out of college in 1969, I was talking to one of the keypunch operators (Data Entry today) and she asked, “How old do you think I am???”
I took it as a serious question! What if I guessed too old? Well, I guessed an age too young, then subtracted 5 years, and told her. She got all excited, told all of the other women, and each one asked me to guess their age.
I learned to avoid that topic wherever possible in the future.
I managed to succeed for 51 years. Then, last week at City Fire, one of the women was talking to my wife. It was noisy. All I heard was “birthday & 85.”
So, I asked her, “Is your mother turning 85?”
No, it was her! She sings the most active dance song for karaoke, dances to even more songs than we do, and is 10 years older! It was an honest mistake anybody could make. I could not tell for sure what her reaction was.
It’s possible to miss-guess at any time in your life. You want to be reasonably close. An outrageous difference makes you look like a fool or not serious.
