Last time we talked about mental age vs. chronological age.  There were few responses but all were fun.

Reader RJF – and former scuba diver – starts off with an inspiring story.

I am not the scuba diver and world traveler that I used to until I turned 82. But I still play bridge and do my own food shopping /cooking …

Reader Cleta discovered that mentally, she’s barely drinking age…

I’m 21 – what the heck???!!! I must say this made my day. Like Olympia’s character told Sally’s character in Steel Magnolias, “Ya gotta lighten up.”

The test showed I’m 47 years younger than my actual age. No surprise to me, I always say “ WHEN I GROW UP”

Your Turn

Read the rest! And take a look at Arlene’s sunny take in the comments.  Curious? Take the test here, and please come back here and report the results! How old are you in your head?

Original Text:

A friend recently sent me a link to a story about ‘mental age.”

Apparently, there’s a lot of research and hoohah about chronological or body age vs. mental age – just googling ‘mental age” brings up more than 2 trillion results.

Which Mental Age?

There’s two kinds, of course.  One is the age/facility of our mental capabilities – that’s the kind defined by Wikipedia: “how a specific individual, at a specific age, performs intellectually, compared to average intellectual performance for that individual’s actual chronological age.”

The other kind is more subtle – it’s the age we define ourselves in our heads.  For instance, I’m almost 68, but for some reason I”m forever 35 in my head. I love the music from then (I listened to “Higher Love” just yesterday!), some of my best memories are from around then, I looked really awesome then (I still have some of the clothes I wore).

It’s how I interact with people, how I dress, and how I carry myself in the world.

In other words, it’s how I age with attitude!

But how old, really? 

Researchers are seriously looking at mental vs. actual age. There’s actually an online test, developed in Japan, to find out what the ‘experts” judge to be the habits and thought patterns of people at various ages.

Seems I wasn’t far off the mark – according to them, I’m 31!

Your Turn!

How about you? How old do you feel inside and why? If you took the test, how old did it say you were mentally? Let us know in the comments!

Virge Randall is Senior Planet’s Managing Editor. She is also a freelance culture reporter who seeks out hidden gems and unsung (or undersung) treasures for Straus Newspapers; her blog “Don’t Get Me Started” puts a quirky new spin on Old School New York City. Send  Open Thread suggestions to editor@seniorplanet.org.