After waiting nearly 25 minutes in line, the 16-year-old judgmental grocery store clerk said, ""Are you going to buy that Soap Opera Digest? Usually only the old ladies get that.""
I was only moderately concerned at first—I knew at least three other people who had to get home by noon to watch their stories, so I figured I was just another bored college student. Little did I know that when I had enrolled freshman year, the girl who had subscribed to Seventeen magazine since she was 12 had magically turned 68 overnight.
""Let's look at the evidence. You like ‘Frasier.' You like to knit. You judge the young kids with their leggings—"" my friend told me.
""I don't judge them, I just don't understand them. I don't see the point and I don't like looking at Spandex-clad behinds as I walk to classes and the girls always look cold. And stupid.""
""You just used the word ‘behinds'—case in point. Sometimes old ladies that play bingo have pink hair, so you've got that.""
""The hair was a Halloween-induced accident.""
""Anyway, you listen to total old people music and do you like ‘Antiques Roadshow?'""
""Only when they find out that some circa Revolutionary War rifle is a fake and the old guy with it looks like he is going to cry.""
""And there you go.""
I looked down at block of cheese I had been eating and at the knitting needles piled up on my desk with a half-made scarf dangling from them. I yawned and looked over the rim of my glasses at a clock: 8:23 p.m.
Somewhere in the past two years I had aged 50 years. How could that have happened? There was only one foolproof way to figure out what my age was.
I headed to the one place that would help me rediscover who I was, with the help of between 10 and 12 carefully worded multiple-choice questions. It was quiz time on the Seventeen magazine website. All right, first one—What kind of party animal are you? Pssh, I was totally the life of the party.
Eleven questions later, I found out I wasn't. I was a ""party pooper"" who ""prefers to spend most of your time with a few good friends in the corner of a rocking party. For you, the thing that matters most about a party is the food—"" I stopped reading.
Second quiz: What's Your Theme Song? Totally ""Get the Party Started.""
Not at all. It was something stupid by Josh Groban—a target of old lady swooning—because ""you give us hope that maybe fairy tales do exist!"" How could a magazine targeted at 14-year-old girls possibly have an old lady option?
The ensuing quizzes revealed nothing new: My celebrity prom date was the non-threatening Ryan Cabrera—the spiked hair is parent-friendly edgy—my pants style is ""comfortable and relaxed"" (they might as well say elastic waist-banded and tapered)—and I didn't even want to know which celeb's sleep styles were most like mine. If a Seventeen quiz couldn't reveal what my true personality was, what could?
I took one last quiz with the hope that it would reveal my bra personality and consequently put to rest my elderly inclinations. It told me that what I looked most for in life was support, that I took a no-frills approach to dating and that my best character trait was that I was steady. I had been expecting something nice and lacey—instead I got something large and cotton with a little bow in the middle to spice it up.
Sign me up for the old folks' home now.
