A few days ago I met this lady who was 104 years old. Not that I am an expert on guessing the age of anyone over 75 /I would be terrible at running that carnival game where the overweight scruffy carni has to guess your age or weight (which btw I always won bc I look 6 years older and 20lbs skinnier than I actually am)/ but nonetheless this woman looked good for her age.
To put it into perspective, I deduced she was born in 1906. 1906 - when the Second Geneva Convention was held to protect the Sick and Shipwrecked Members of the Armed Forces at Sea. Pirate invasions would be rampant if not for that. 1906 - when the Grand Duchy of Finland became the first nation to allow females to stand as candidates. (CT's first female governor - Ella Grasso). And 1906 - when SOS became an international distress signal. Could you imagine the sale of Brillo pads without the term SOS existing?
This woman has been alive for a long time and I really only met her in passing.
Her smile wrinkles are permanent. She is covered in freckles - sunscreen wasn't invented until 1938 and first commercially available 1944 - she would have been 38. She was gaily walking about and happy to shake my hand, for only a second though, as she was quickly distracted by the handsome young gentleman standing to the left of me. She was happy. I was happy.
So what do you say to a woman who is 104 years old? Thinking I was rather catchy, sort of creative and kind of funny, I said "104 years old! You don't look a day over 85." Note: Really thinking this compliment was something she hadn't heard before and would spark an interesting conversation that would carry through the night and maybe every Tuesday for rest of her years. I wanted that experience, I could write a novel - Tuesday's with Miss Martin. The possibilities seemed endless. Yet, I had but thirty seconds of her time. A fleeting moment is the span of billions. I tried a joke and she offered me this.
"It's a pleasure to meet you. And age is just a number."
