Asymmetrical Information

This is easy. I am forever 27. Best time of my life- I was doing my post-doctoral work, taking my research in whatever direction I wished, had about twice the money that I had as a graduate student (much less than I make now, but with far fewer expenses), and didn't have anything near the level of responsibilities that I have today. I struggle constantly to regain that sense of contentment.

I think my permanent age is between 32 and 35. Although my body certainly thinks otherwise! Thank heaven for Celebrex.

35 is about right. Young enough to not have any age-related health issues at all, and to still have boundless energy. Old enough to not care about silly stuff anymore, and have a far better aesthetic sense. I'm still not incurious about new things, and hope I never reach that stage.

Age is but a number. My personality can hardly be described by a number. However, perhaps this is because I haven't reached it yet.

you're always 17 in your hometown. definitely my age. 17-18, senior year of high school. i'm only 24 now, but that's been tops so far.

I think mine is 50. I've still got a little while to go.

I think it's much easier to maintain 50 than, say, 25.

I've been 42 since I was 5!

When I was 8 I got back from Disney World and calculated to the penny how much money I would need to retire there.

Hotel $1400 a week, meals and tickets $1250 x 52 weeks x average return on S&P 500 since 1929.... x rate of inflation = .....

I mean didn't everyone watch Louis Rukeyser and read the WSJ in elementary school?

Oh, and I assume everyone put all their yellow legos in a lego safe so they could play Federal Reserve.

I think some people are misinterpreting the question. It's not "what was your favorite age?" or "when we were you happiest?" It's "at what point were your actual age and psychological age the same? (or at what point will they be?)" That could even be a point when you were (or will be) unhappy, if you're fundamentally an unhappy kind of person.

It's "at what point were your actual age and psychological age the same?

What if my actual and psychological age have pretty much also been about the same? When I was 5 I wore cowboy clothes. When I was 10 I read science fiction. When I was in college, I got into snowboarding. When I hit my 30's, I got married, and turned towards the intellectual life.

Early 30s is the sweet spot. Old enough that you've grown beyond much of the 20-something immaturity; young enough that you haven't completely lost the 20-something bod.

At 38, I know about these things. ;-)

I turn 30 over the summer, and I've been telling my friends that I've been that age all my life. I've always had an intellectual interest, and rarely felt like getting plastered was worth the hangover. I think the next decade will be the best years of my life, not college like so many feel.

The problem is that my internal age pretty much changes from day to do. I revert back to my 15 year old self when with my high school friends and when talking to my husband sometimes I feel quite middle-aged.

So, it depends. It depends on what I'm doing. It depends where I am, it depends what I'm wearing. I don't think I have one age.

I'm in the same age range as you are Megan. That's the time when one is still experiencing a lot of things for the first time, learning about the world and still full of ideals, but old enough to know a lot about how things work. Optimistic enough to believe in the possibility of change, but realistic enough to know that plans do not necessarily a solution make. and bursting forth with enthusiasm over so many things about the world and its possibilities for you. If I were to pin mine down, I'd say 21 or 23.

My permanent age is a fetus.

I'm not sure I have a permanent age, although I have noticed that my mental age seems to consistently lag my physical age by anywhere from 3-5 years.

I can say that I was somewhere in my early 20s when my writing style finally matured, i.e., I could look back at things I had written a year ago and realize that although some editing for clarity wouldn't hurt, I would write it more or less the same way if I started over today.

A related question is when your past actions stop seeming a bit strange to you. I can think of things that I did in my late 20s that seem quite odd to me now, for example. I'm 45, and everything from about my mid-thirties on more or less fits the same template. The differences are mostly added experience, not larger shifts in thinking.

I think somewhere around 33. You are older, and wiser, but not old. You can still explain not being married and sound rational. You can afford to falter at that age, or be in career shift or slump. A whole crop of women from about 27 to 37 are eyeing you as potential husband material. And yet, if you are actually irresponsible and not ready for marriage, you can still tag the younger women who are just up for fun and a sidekick.

I say this though with a high degree of theoreticalness, me generally failing at getting any woman, and at any age. So perhaps what I am answering is the age I think I feel I am if I were not me, but the me I imagine myself to be if I lived in someone's elses body.

Cause while I feel like 33, nothing I said actually applies, even when I was actually 33. But you know what I mean.

I've always felt my permanent age was somewhere around 87, give or take. I only have to live another sixty years to feel comfortable with myself.

I'm about right - 45. When I was in high school my friends referred to me as a middle aged teenager. I don't know what it'll be like to be a middle aged golden ager!

I had put you at 24, I am in fact 32.

27, I think. More responsible than most of my friends at 17. More playful and kid-friendly than most of my friends at 37 (well, on Sunday I'll be 37)

I think I hit my "permanent age" in my mid 20's and have been lucky to stay there ever since. This is becoming a little inconvenient, though, as my friends keep getting older...

Hmmm...
I've always felt like I was the father of young and foolish children, but not yet in the sensible financial planning age yet.

I guess that makes me 26 or so.

Egh! 26 was a really bad year for me.

About 50 - so fifteen more years to go. But I think that's more common with gen-xers than people realize: our parents, after all, weren't much up to the task of being adults, so we wound up learning a lot at an early age, like it or not, and trying to puzzle out matters that their generation shrugged off at twenty-eight. That's where the generational cynicism comes from: no-fault divorce, custody battles, the long self-justifying "I've just got to be me" lectures from parents who, in a better age, would be properly ashamed of their conduct, the insistence that we should see mental health professionals because our parents were crazy - really, I could go on, but what's the point? Most of your readers have seen at least some of it. Self-pity is so Boomerish. The stiff upper lip, a little bit of repression, and a coat and tie look a hell of a lot better to me than a greasy gray ponytail, therapy, and a second wife. Better Cary Grant than Dustin Hoffman. At so many levels.

30, which in a couple of weeks will match my nominal age. Since I was 14 or so, I've always wanted a wife, house and kids, and now I've got it all. But I love athletics and I'll hate getting old and watching my joints give out one by one. I won't give up running until my knees shatter completely.

I'm glad this topic came up. Growing up, my mother always said I was born middle aged. When I was in my early 20s, I had a friend tell me I would hit my stride in my 30s. Now in my 30s, I think I'm coming up on my permanent age, probably late 30s - early 40s.

As a longtime reader, I would have guesses Jane's permanent age would have been older than 18-25, more like like 40-45.

When I turned 49, my mother said she considered me to be "19 with 30 years experience", and I think she was right. Moreover, I hit 19 when I was about 11, except that my political views were barely starting to take shape. So I've kept my "real age" for quite some time now.

As a longtime reader, I would have guesses Jane's permanent age would have been older than 18-25, more like like 40-45.

Clearly you never read her in the early days of Live from the WTC. She held onto a delightful 19 for several years before evening out. Not that there was anything wrong with that, many of those old posts are devilishly funny to read, sort of like watching Dennis Miller appear with Jon Stewart (but with complex economic analyses interspersed).

I'm not sure but I think my permanent age is my age when I had my best year. That's early thirties.

My age it means nothing, my name it means less, and the country I comes from is called the Midwest. I stopped worrying about my age long ago, when I read of Oliver Wendall Holmes, upon seeing a pretty young woman walk by, saying "Oh, to be 65 again."

According to my college-aged kids, I'm a 14 year old. "My mom has the musical taste of a 14 year old" (said with sneering tone to friends.)

I was most my self when I was a teenage punk. I stopped butchering my hair and dressing like that when I had my first kid, of course, but inside that is still me. I still "dress to offend" sometimes; but only enough to offend people who really care about such things. Normal people won't notice, but somebody who really cares will do a double take (I'm talking about you executive secretaries on the 10th floor.) I guess I'm just terminally immature. I can't stand to be pressured to conform. I conform anyway, cus I'd hate to be the embarrassing mom who tries to be cool, but I resent it.

I think that sometimes major life events can change one's permanent age. I'd been 27 for a long time, but now that I'm expecting to be a father very soon, I think my permanent age has advanced into somewhere in the 30s.

Steve Sailer said of Garrison Keilor that he's always been 63.

Personally, I've always seen myself as in my early 50's, although obviously I've still got some time to go, on that one. You're pretty well clear that one of the dam**d kids anymore (and you've stopped even trying), the battle between the sexes has pretty much settled down to an occaisionally pleasant stalemate, and you begin to realize that you're "The Man" that everybody seems so interested in "sticking it to".

Jane,
A couple of related comments.In Robert Caro's biography of LBJ he quotes Abe Fortas as saying he was "born old".And Princess Grace once commented ,"Everyone gets older.Except Cary Grant."I've never given any thought to my permanent age

Probably 33. But I haven't gotten there yet, so who knows.

Nine. You're old enough to think you know what's going on, but not old enough to have a whole lot of responsibility. You can be impertinent, and excused as "just a kid". You have boundless energy, insatiable curiosity, and are not yet burdened by the whole subject of relations between the sexes. Fourth grade is not particularly challanging, and you have lots of time to daydream in class, and no homework. You can read adult books and magazines and sometimes you're on the verge of understanding. You laugh more and hurt less. You view nature as Annie Dillard does, an unceasing wonderland of neat things, large and small. Fifty three years later, I'm still nine.

I turned 40 on March 25th, but I'm really only 28. I'll always be 28. Don't know why, but I've been telling my wife for years that I will never grow up. I can't. I don't want to. I refuse.

28 forever.

Of course, this means dad is going to be a terrible embarrassment for my two daughters.

I'm another 28. And as I'm really 36 it is just starting to tell.

Sadly my best year was 22/23. Or maybe 30. Either way it didn't coincide.

9 only works from an adult point of view. An adult could have a ball at 9 (think Calvin and Hobbes) but to a 9 year old it doesn't come easy at all.

Probably early 30s. Old enough to be cynical about the youth of today(I may be 21, but I routinely say things like "Kids these days..." to people older than me), but young enough to enjoy a lot of the same things.

I have to add my own slight twist to this: I'm a 13 year-old boy, despite the fact that I'm actually a 28 year-old woman. I love teasing my little sister (a permanent 45 year-old), watching movies and shows that emphasize crude humor and/or lots of gore, and being generally immature. When I worked in day care I tended to bond better with the 6th grade boys because we talked about video games and sports.

Thank goodness my (younger) husband is so much more mature than I am.

I think I'm too young to know yet. I'm 25, and I know that my permanent age is older than I am now, but because I've not yet experienced any of those older ages, I'm not sure whether the amount older I feel should be pinned at 30 or 40 or 50. I assume I'll know when I get there.