Act Your Age, Not Your Shoe Size
The other day I was traveling to work and the conversation on the bus was more animated than usual, which means that there was conversation on the bus. One of my colleagues joked that although he is 40, he has a mental age of 17. In other words, he still thinks he's Superboy when he's actually more like the father from the Wonder Years.
This got me thinking about what my mental age is. I also sometimes feel like I'm still a teenager. In fact, I cracked a joke the other day and my daughter's friend remarked that my jokes are just as good as Eitan's. Who'se Eitan? Her nearly-thirteen-year-old brother. The phrase "act your age, not your shoe size" would not really apply in this situation because using the Australian shoe size chart, my joke was almost spot on, give or take 2.5 years.
There are a number of ways I can measure my mental age:
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This got me thinking about what my mental age is. I also sometimes feel like I'm still a teenager. In fact, I cracked a joke the other day and my daughter's friend remarked that my jokes are just as good as Eitan's. Who'se Eitan? Her nearly-thirteen-year-old brother. The phrase "act your age, not your shoe size" would not really apply in this situation because using the Australian shoe size chart, my joke was almost spot on, give or take 2.5 years.
There are a number of ways I can measure my mental age:
- Self assessment
- Friend
- Psychologist
I decided that none of these options would be accurate enough. For starters, nobody can assess themselves because they are too biased to come up with an accurate result. Friends tell you what you want to hear, especially if its your turn to buy the next round. Psychologists will spend hours asking a bunch pointless questions until they finally ask you what you think, mumble something that sounds like agreement (but not necessarily) and then hand you the invoice.
I decided to take a far more scientific approach.
The second-top result for my Google search for "mental age" was an online mental age test. I normally don't hold much faith in these types of websites, but mymentalage.com is FREE, enables me to DISCOVER MORE ABOUT MYSELF and DOESN'T REQUIRE REGISTRATION. Also, 475,190 people took the test before me, so I figured it must be good.
The instructions were to be honest because nobody will see my answers. That assurance was comforting, so I clicked Start.
The test comprised 20 questions, ranging from my thoughts about the President (it didn't specify which one), to questions about what I would do if I found an old shirt in my closet, to how I would rate McDonald's food on a scale ranging from "disgusting" to "gourmet".
Then came the twentieth question: Do baseball caps look better backwards or forwards? I knew that this final click will reveal my true mental age. With just the slightest amount of nervousness, a little trepidation, and a brief pause for dramatic effect, I clicked the fateful button.
I kid you not, this is hard, cold scientific proof: My mental age is exactly my chronological age. Beat that.
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Hmmm. Mine worked out to be 47. Mathematically speaking that means that when you were 21 and I was 13, our mental ages were the same... Wow, maybe this test is pretty accurate after all... ;)
ReplyDeleteThat was fun! Mine turned out to be 45, two years younger than my chronological age. But I answered one question "wrong" (the one about Twitter). I bet the answer I wanted to give would have made me older.
ReplyDeleteWell, my mental age is 33, which is 20 years younger than my chronological age! I am so proud!!
ReplyDeleteI'm too scared to take the test. If my mental and chronological ages correlate, then could well be an old fuddy duddy. If my mental age is 20 or 30 years younger than my chronological age, then I could well be immature. Can't win...
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ReplyDeleteMine was 38 and I'm 52. Does that mean I have to work an extra 14 years? Nooooooo......
ReplyDeleteCouldn't resist. It's not really a test about maturity, but it was fun any way. I tested at 36 though I'm 44. On a measure of maturity, I probably would see something different. Since I have teenagers and am strongly involved with social media, I test fairly young on the hipness scale. Since I'm an athlete and green (carless) person, I test younger on the health scale, so there you go.
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