Pat’s Dating Profile
Pat asked if I would help her write a bio for a dating website. I paused, not from lack of ideas, but from an appreciation for the optimism required to pursue romance at eighty-two.
At this stage of life, one no longer operates under illusions about time. Knees negotiate. Memory wanders. Reading glasses develop a curious independence. Yet hope, strangely, remains untouched by any of this.
Pat approached the matter with enviable composure. No theatrics. No self-consciousness. Just a simple request:
“Ron, can you help me with my dating profile?”
After careful thought, I offered the following:
“My name is Pat W. My alias is Delicious. I am seventy-seven, though for the right person, I am willing to be sixty-four. I am a multimillionaire in personality, resilience, and life experience. I am multiracial, somewhere between Halle Berry and Betty Davis or Joan Crawford, depending on lighting and imagination. If you would like to meet me, we can talk.”
Pat read it slowly. She smiled. She nodded approvingly.
Only later did it occur to me that at eighty-two, subtracting five years is not vanity. It is ambition.
Still, I admire her resolve. Somewhere, I am certain, is a gentleman of similar vintage adjusting his own biography, confidently claiming to be “seventy-one” and an avid hiker.
Reality, it seems, remains flexible. Hope, however, is completely unbothered.
Pat’s Dating Profile
(Uncondensed version)
Pat asked if I would help her write a dating profile. At eighty-two, this struck me as less a casual request and more a declaration of philosophical defiance.
Late-life dating requires a very particular confidence. One must accept time’s arithmetic while simultaneously ignoring it.
I proposed:
“My name is Pat W. My alias is Delicious. I am seventy-seven, though for the right person, I am willing to be sixty-four. I am a multimillionaire in personality and life experience. I resemble a graceful blend of Halle Berry and Michelle Obama, depending entirely on lighting and imagination. If you would like to meet me, we can talk.”
Pat appeared entirely satisfied with both the description and the revised mathematics of her existence.
At eighty-two, subtracting five years is not denial. It is being an optimist with excellent branding.
On Age, Identity, and Optimism
There is something quietly fascinating about how human beings relate to age. Chronology insists on precision, yet identity rarely cooperates.
We do not experience ourselves as numbers. We experience ourselves as continuity. The same interior voice, the same humor, the same sense of being unmistakably oneself, even as the mirror introduces increasingly creative interpretations.
In youth, age is anticipation. In later years, age is no longer negotiable. Reality meets illusion. End of story. Playfully revising one’s age is rarely vanity. More often, it is a refusal to let arithmetic define vitality.
The body records time with unforgiving accuracy. Hope does not.
Perhaps this explains why laughter so often accompanies aging. We recognize the absurdity. We try to accept the inevitability begrudgingly. And yet, we proceed anyway.
Hope, after all, has never demonstrated much respect for calendars.
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