Of Birthdays and Age by Bonnie Le Hamilton

This past Monday was my sister’s-in-law birthday. No big deal except this is the sister-in-law that lives here in Pocatello. Needless to say, I attended her birthday party Monday after work.

At one point during the evening, Shirley tried to tell a young friend of ours that she was fifty-eight.

I looked at her and said, “You are sixty-one as of today.”

Breanna, our young friend, took that in stride, but later when I mentioned I was forty years older than her, her eyes just about bugged out.

Now I must point out that Breanna is a home health aid for both myself and Shirley, and she knows that we have to be at least fifty to qualify for the program paying for her services. Also, she knew that Shirley was older than me, but apparently, she hadn’t gotten the memo on how much older Shirley is. As such, she had figured my age to be somewhere in my early fifties.

She was closer to correct than most people usually are. 😊

Breanna doubted I was really as old as I said.

I told her I was born in 1962.

She was still shocked and actually asked her coworkers present if they thought I looked sixty.

They were all surprised.

Okay, it’s in my genes. I do not look my age. I never have. Konnie can say the same thing.

And it really has little to do with our height. We just don’t look our age, and that has something to do with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

Anyway, EDS is genetic.

Konnie and I have mild cases of it, but a prominent side effect of this condition is not aging as fast as others. People with this syndrome just don’t look their age.

Now Konnie and I are on the recessive end of this problem, hence the “Mild” part. Konnie’s middle daughter inherited EDS from both her parents, and her father’s isn’t a mild form. It seems that mild plus medium equals severe. The poor kid got it worse than any of her siblings.

Of course, if she reads this, she’d probably point out how far into her twenties she is.

Yeah, I know, even Konnie’s youngest has surpassed the 20-year mark. Technically none of them are kids. But they are all twenty-nine or more years younger than me, so yeah, they still are kids to me.

By the way, for those of you who hadn’t heard already, my doctor confirmed I have a mild case of EDS on my last checkup. Explaining all my problems with my knee going out of joint. Which is minor compared to Konnie’s husband Jerry, or well, most of their kids have had way more problems than I have. They all have it.

Such is life though.

Konnie and I have other relatives who most assuredly had EDS. One uncle, in particular, could bend his thumb all the way down to his wrist. EDS is essentially “loose ligaments” some people have “looser” or more flexible ligaments than others.

Most contortionists probably have EDS.

In fact, CSI: NY did have an episode where the victim came from a long line of contortionists in a circus. During the show, a character pointed out that a lot of people with EDS became contortionists, simply because it was something not everybody could do.

Don’t ask me to do that.

I mean, back in my younger, slimmer days, I was quite limber, surprisingly so, but that was several decades ago.

Nowadays, the only aftereffects of EDS I have is a bad knee and the luck of not looking my age.

Then again, maybe Breanna and her coworker, all being in their late teens to early twenties, expect anyone who is sixty to have a head full of gray hair. 😊

Well, I do have a little white, down the center of my otherwise brown hair, just not a whole head of it. I also don’t have a whole lot of wrinkles.

As a teen, I hated not looking my age. Now it’s kind of fun.

But all this got me thinking about my characters and why I haven’t had one getting mistaken for being younger than they are. Or something like that. It’s not like it doesn’t happen to other people.

I read a story a while back about a young lady who was a teacher, and a fellow teacher took her for a student and snatched her phone out of her hands. And another young lady had a fellow teacher haul her into the principal’s office for being out of class when she was on her break period, and the principal was her friend.

So, there are stories about people not looking their age, and I’ve certainly experienced it, so why haven’t I written it?

Anyway, happy writing everyone.