Why Are You As Old As You Are?

Hokey 1950s-style cartoon by Holland / Getty Images

Hello, welcome to the Weekend Gene Pool, where I enforce a solemn covenant every week: I entertain you, and in return you supply me with Anecdotes answering a question I pose.

First, an anecdote. Mine.

A week ago, I asked you, in this space, to specify at what age you first felt you were an adult. The most common answer, at 38 percent, was “19 to 25.” But your answers were pretty well across the board, from “18 and under” (11 percent) to “Hasn’t happened yet.” (12 percent). I chose the last one.

Yeah, I raised a family, paid a mortgage, succeeded in a difficult profession, and whatnot. I can grow a beard. My nose hairs can seem insuperable. For a brief time, I was actually allowed to manage people, doing performance evaluations and such. But I was only replicating adulthood. There are areas in my life — important areas — where I have remained infantile, even as a septuagenarian. One is handling money.

Take my behavior at an ATM. I dip my card, enter my password, and then turn my head away from the screen, squinting at it out of the corner of one eye, at full arm’s length, using my palm on the screen as a shield, peeking through my fingers like a kid at a horror flick. This is all to block from view my account balance, which I never ask for but which many ATMs show, unbidden, in a large display right near the top of the screen. When I once complained about this to my bank’s branch manager, I was treated like a dotty old man in a shopping mall who’s ranting about how the escalators go too durned fast.

I am weird about this because, down deep, I am a child. In particular, knowing the size of my checking account balance bothers me because, if the number is less than I would expect, I worry that I am somehow becoming insolvent, and if it is more than I would expect, I worry that I am squandering money by carelessly parking it in a nonproductive place.

Until very recently, I had an unconscionable amount of money in a non-interest-bearing checking account — just to supply a safe cushion in case I suddenly needed it for, say, a cash ransom for my kidnaped dog. Eventually, exasperated, my son-in-law sat next to me at the computer and guided me, step by step, into opening a high-yield savings account. He practically held my fingers and pressed them onto the appropriate keys.

So, that is your challenge for this week. It is two-part. Choose either or both.

One: Explain your answer to the previous poll. Why did you choose the age range you did? What turned you into an adult at that age?

and/or

Two: How are you still a child? That doesn’t have to have been your answer in the poll, but what qualities do you retain that might be infantile? Be specific, and funny.

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As always, send these things to our Big Orange Button.

And finally, today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

And yes, I have a strong view on this subject that I will share on Tuesday. See you then.