Pam's Blog

My next door neighbor is 92 and it comes up in conversation with her. This statement, “I’m 92 and … ” (there is a wide variety of topics with which she fills in the blank), got me thinking about age.

Recently I goofed at work. Being the editor of our internal monthly newsletter, I publish the birthdays each issue … without the year. In March, I forgot to take off the year. I’ve been doing the newsletter for decades and get very little feedback. Boy, did I hear from the March birthdays! Some of them were NOT happy about their ages being revealed. That also got me thinking about age.

In January, I volunteered to spend an afternoon with a Girl Scout Troupe. One of the scouts was turning 10. It was a big deal … double digits. She was proudly sharing her age.

So I wonder … when is it that some of us become secretive about our age? We proudly announce we are 10 and 92 … but somewhere in the middle some people become sensitive to aging.

How old are you and why would you share (or not) that number?

A coworker described me as “quirky” this week … as in “Have you ever thought of dating him? I like him and I like you. He’s quirky and you’re quirky.” That’s the first time “quirky” has been the match making criteria (when it has pertained to me as being one of the potential matches – and no, I wasn’t interested).

So, I looked up quirky in the thesaurus. Here are the results.
“Definition: Eccentric. Quirky means strikingly unconventional or given to idiosyncrasies
Synonyms: bizarre, far out, freakish, freaky, idiosyncratic, in left field, kinky, odd, off-the-wall, out of the ordinary, outre, peculiar, strange, unconventional, unorthodox, unusual, wacky, way-out, weird.”

I hope she meant quirky in a good way.

So, what do you think? Me … quirky?