Mental Age

As any of my friends will tell you, I have a Peter Pan complex. Sure, growing up and dealing with responsibilities is inevitable, but I will do everything I can to ignore this fact.

Because my mental age runs significantly younger than my biological age, I try to work that to my advantage. Last year, Anna and I crashed a college's freshmen orientation pool party/dinner. We successfully obtained a free meal, but all of our friends thought this was an audacious move since we looked well over eighteen. Sure, I think we looked a bit on the older side, but amongst a group of strangers, who was going to call us on this?

I also put my internal age to use with solicitors. Whenever I receive an unwanted sales call, I say, "I'm sorry, my dad cant come to the phone right now, can I take a message?" Obviously, the solicitor has no message and the conversation ends promptly. Plus, I get a kick out of pretending to be a kid.

Recently, my neighborhood has had an influx of door-to-door solicitors. After a couple of awkward encounters where I had to be a "grown-up" and pointedly say that I wasn't interested, I decided to revert to my old method of feigning youth as an excuse. About a half dozen times in the past few months, I've opened the door part way and said, "Sorry, my mom won't let me talk to strangers when she's not home."

On the last occasion I tried this, Jocelyn was at visiting at my house. After I shut the door on the salesperson, she proceeded to laugh in my face. "You have facial hair!" she accused. It's true, I'm twenty-seven and don't look like someone whose parents forbid him from speaking to strangers, but I honestly forget that I can't get away with it as easily as I do on the phone. That said, I'm not going to stop. I'm going to tell solicitors that I'm not allowed to talk to strangers until I'm 80. What's the worst they're going to do: contradict me?