Ah, music to my ears…

Sort of.

Today when I was at my 8 year old son’s school, we were sitting together watching the kindergarten students put on the annual Chinese New Year’s parade.

Near the end of the parade, one of the parents was walking by, and we started chit-chatting about how cute all the kindergarten students were–

(And they were super cute with all of their Year of the Dragon masks and stuff.)

While we were talking, at one point I said something motherly to my son,

then this lady pointed to him, shocked–

“He’s yours?”

I laughed yes, thinking she was referring to the fact he’s a blonde and I’m a dark brown brunette.

“What–were you 12 years old when you gave birth to him??”

Now I really laughed. I told her she was my new best friend. But she seemed shocked…genuinely shocked…

She said there was no way I looked old enough to have an 8 year old. (I had him when I was 27.)

And this is something that keeps happening again and again–people thinking we’re much younger than we actually are.

Why do we look so young? Why are we aging so much slower than everyone else?

A few months before my uncle died at the age of 57, he said his doctor said to him,

“Here you are Robin, one of my sickest patients, but you don’t look at day older than 45.”

Is there a connection between our immune deficiency and our aging slower than average? Maybe a partial IL-6 has something with this?

Or maybe it’s just an added curse–not only the curse of looking healthy when you’re sick, but worse, the curse of looking even *better* than average when you’re sick.

Some days, I like it…ok, I admit maybe some days I like this a lot 🙂

But I’d rather be normal, of course…and live out like the rest of my peers to be 80…I’ll even take 60 at this point 🙂

Until then, I guess I should just be happy with this one little side effect, but it’s hard to be happy,

when the cost of looking so much younger than average is this great–

(It’s also very possible it could be unrelated–just a bad coincidence. My mother, who is perfectly healthy, has also been told she looks a lot younger than her age (we Canadians age well, I suppose–) 🙂

But I actually think it’s a little bit of both–natural genes, and something missing in our immune system too. Something that connects with aging, that we’re just a little short of.

Or maybe something works better in our bodies than average? My uncle used to say he healed very well from surgeries–me too.

I guess in time, only the right test by the right scientist will tell the reason behind all this youth and beauty is….

*excuse me as I roll my eyes and puke* : )

I guess until that day, I’m headed towards continual train wreck of looking good until the day I die….and when that day finally arrives, I might not even need any touch ups by the morgue, either.

🙂