How Old Are You?

I just did a brief drive by of all my unpublished posts, hoping that one would suddenly leap out and say, "Finish me, you twit! I'm so worth it." Alas, alack, and rue the day, none did.

I spent the better part of today trying to Get Things Done and being thwarted at every turn by, I dunno, the gods? First there were my taxes. I am now up to 2007, thank you very much, a year in which I was gainfully unemployed for most of the time. Thus, one would think my taxes would be a breeze to do. Wouldn't one? No W2s to mess about with. No, but there was that pesky little 1099B that somehow made it into my stack of documents. I'd never seen one of those before. I hadn't a clue what it could be for, and it seemed to be saying I had received a check, which I swear to god never made it to me--or had it?

I have a nasty habit (and you should know this in advance) of not opening my mail. It makes me nervous to open my mail. People want things from me, like money for goods exchanged. And while I may have enjoyed the goods initially, I'm so over them now and why are you bothering me! Did I not open the mail in which this check was sent? It's perfectly possible. I have a rather lax attitude toward money. It makes me nervous. Thus, I'd rather just not think about it. Maybe tomorrow, at Tara.

Yes, I know this is incredibly immature for one who is at--oh my god--midlife. But that's the way it is. Years of living have nothing at all to do with maturity, and all you babybloggers better get used to it. Some of the oldest people I have known have been years younger than I.

So now that we've settled that there's a strong streak of willful immaturity running through me--here's a question that I started asking people when I turned 40:

• How old are you?
• No, how old are you?

The answer to the first is rarely the same as the answer to the second, and it seems that the older one gets, the wider the gap. So--how old are you? No, how old are you?