Y is for Youthful by Conlee Ricketts #atozchallenge

is for Youthful

I’ve always attributed my youthful attitude to the fact that I spent 23 years around 10-18 year-olds trying to get them to love math by making an ass out of myself, but it may or may not be the direct cause.  It could be a chicken-or-the-egg kind of relationship.  Maybe my inner goofiness and childlike qualities made me perfect to teach math?  Notice: I said childlike not childish.  I just wanted to put that out there.

Maybe it's genetic.  My dad is 87 with a mother who made it to 101.  While he was here for a visit last month he said, “…of course I always feel like I’m 12.” 

My dad is a very youthful 87 year old.  Most people who meet him are shocked to learn his age.  He only seems “old” when he’s sad, I can hear it when he calls me up to tell me about a death in the family or among his “contemporaries.” That’s what he calls his friends in the “over 50 community” where he lives—and even then they might be as much as twenty years younger than he when they die.

Like Dad, I don’t feel my age either; I don’t feel 49, but I also don’t feel like I’m 12.  I think I hover somewhere between 20-35.  My interior youthful feeling doesn’t always match my exterior abilities, like how my body reacts to jumping on the trampoline with my daughter. I don’t think that’s age though I think that’s my lack of exercise catching up with me, but what if it isn’t.  What if I’m kidding myself and I really am getting old?  Nope, not today.

I don’t spend a lot of time in front of a mirror.  I probably max out at three times in a day; this isn't intentional but this may be helping me maintain the illusion of my youth.  I enjoy playing with my daughter, being goofy, laughing, and just plain acting silly.  I’m fascinated with how young I feel—inside.  I think this phenomenon is amazing because when I do catch sight of me in a mirror I am almost always taken aback by my appearance.  I see my mother looking at me which isn’t a bad thing; it’s just a shocking thing half the time.  I am not expecting her to show up in the mirror; I’m expecting the version of me I see in my head to show up in the mirror.

Regardless of who joins me at the mirror I think playing, being goofy and silly, and not taking everything so damn seriously is the key anti-aging formula I bring to my beauty routine.  I just need to remember to apply it every day.

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