It kind of undoes the good of a massage when....

your 23-year-old therapist asks you as you lay face down and naked, "How old are you?" and you stupidly answer truthfully.

I have decided it's futile to try lying about my age anymore.

"NO!" the therapist gasped, easing up on her elbow dug into my back. "You are older than my mother."

She meant this as a complement to my deceptively youthful appearance, I like to think.

Nearly as bad, at a party the other night this quite beer-sodden man asked if my family were in Sarajevo and I explained no, I was divorced and my three sons were grown and living in the U.S. He looked at me, his eyes swimming a little, and asked, puzzled, "Oh, so you're older?"

Yep. And wiser too.