I am NOT Old

I have 2 teenage daughters - 17 and almost 15, and a 4 year old son. I am a professional with all kinds of education and a real career with an excellent income and a mortgage and insurance and all of the tidy little annoyances which throughout my more youthful years were the very definition of being OLD.

But I am NOT old, even though I have kids old enough to insist that I am.

Rumors say that I am 37... which to those of you who haven't even qualified to vote in a Presidential election before, may seem ancient, but as I face my 6th Presidential election, I am here to tell you, I've barely made 3/4ths of the climb UP the front side of the hill, thus I am no way over it.

These folks are all older than me:

Heather Graham (1970)
Queen Latifah (1970)
Mariah Carey (1970)
Uma Thurman (1970)
Naomi Campbell (1970)
Kelly Ripa (1970)
Jennifer Lopez (1969)
Renee Zellweger (1969)
Catherine Zeta-Jones (1969)
Owen Wilson (1968)
Nicole Kidman (1967)
Pamela Anderson (1967)
Cindy Crawford (1966)
Sarah Jessica Parker (1965)
Robert Downey Jr. (1965)
Sandra Bullock (1964)
Keanu Reeves (1964)
Johnny Depp (1963)
Brad Pitt (1963)
Tom Cruise (1962)
Meg Ryan (1961)

and my favorites who are A LOT older than me...
Meg Tilly (1960)
Michelle Pfeiffer (1958)
Tom Hanks (1956)
Kirstie Alley (1951)

Now, you must, of course, ask... what makes these people different than me? What sets them apart that at 40 or 45 or even 56, they still qualify as the "beautiful people" while I look (rather appropriately) like someone's mother? Well, there is the obvious answer of plastic surgeons, personal trainers and in-home chefs. But aside from that, there is the visible physical drain of enormous stress and responsibility not reflected in the faces of those who can pay someone else to deposit their paychecks for them.

I am not old. I am ... experienced. And by the time I'm 50, I'll be able to afford the plastic surgeon, if not the personal trainer, and perhaps I will begin to catch up with those whose faces we pay to see attached to airbrushed bodies in movies and magazines.