Lady of a certain age

For Blackfly Gazette August 22/18

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Estimating someone’s age? Not easy

                                    by Robert LaFrance

I can remember phone numbers from 1988 and licence plate numbers of half the county residents - but not their names. I am a math person. I know how I determine someone’s age, or at least make a good guess at it, but others go about it differently.

(Part of the following column is from one I wrote about fifteen years ago.)

            “How old is your brother?” someone may ask me. I would immediately say that he was born in 1939, so he will be 79 this year, the poor old codger. I, on the other hand, am just a kid (born in 1948) and have already made 70 this year. A non-math person would have to go over everyone’s ages to finally arrive at another person’s age, and would use the same method for everyone. It’s not scientific, but sometimes they arrive at the correct answer.

            Here is an example of that other method: two of my acquaintances, Cherily and Glenda, both ‘of a certain age’ as they say, had heard that their acquaintance Shirley Boomist (not her real name) had died and were trying to figure out how old she had been. It was as good as a circus. In a sad way of course. Condolences.

            “Well, Shirley must have been around cousin Janny’s age,” said Glenda, “because they were in school together, she told me once. The school had grades one to six, so they may not have been THAT close in age but they were within five years of each other – or am I thinking of her sister Jane?”

            “No, I think Jane came after her,” Cherily pointed out, “because remember when they had that birthday party for Jane she said that Shirley was her big sister, and I know Glenda is the same age as Harry Carmody. Remember him? He had that convertible Ford car back when we went to school and he wrecked it in Muniac when he swerved to miss that moose that turned into a mouse when he sobered up.”

            “Yeah, that was quite a car, but I liked our old Monarch. It would hold seven people you know, but of course that was in the days before seat belts.”

            This conversation reminded me of a certain Tilley area road that, legend has it, was designed by an engineer who was following a snake through the woods. “So,” I said, “what about Shirley’s birthday?”

            “She started getting her pension when I was working at May Green’s,” said Cherily, “so she’s not as old as the hills, but she was getting right up there.”

            “No spring chicken,” agreed Glenda. “She was long in the tooth, but not over the hill. I would say she was around seventy when my nephew William was born and he’s in grade ten – I think, but didn’t he skip that grade back in elementary school because he knew more than the teacher?”

            “That wouldn’t have been hard,” said Cherily. “I don’t know how she ever got a teacher’s licence. She was one of the Jansons family from New Denmark, or is it Crombie? Maybe Bairdsville or Lerwick. Anyway, back to Shirley’s age, I think she was in the same grade as Mary Ann Goodine, because they went to Caribou together to buy their graduation dresses…”

            “But wasn’t Shirley’s dress for her cousin Marita’s wedding and Mary Ann’s dress for her own graduation, except she didn’t pass her chemistry exam and had to wait a year to wear it?” said Glenda.

            “I think you’re right there. I remember she was some het up about that, because she was all set to marry Iggy Collard after the graduation and Iggy took up with that girl from Wapske and moved to Meech Lake. What a brood of kids they have now! He’s not getting any younger either, is he?”

            “No spring chicken. He’s getting there.”

            I still wanted to know Shirley’s age. I’m like that. “Any ideas yet?” I said.

            “Well, she was not what I would call ancient,” began Glenda, “but she was in the late winter of life…”

            “Her declining years,” added Cherily.

            Since I like knowing stuff and not guessing. I looked on the Internet and found the local funeral home. On their website was information on the funeral of a Shirley Bamford from Portage. I phoned Shirley Boomist at the number listed in the phone book. She was fine.

            “Fine except for when the weather is really muggy, like today,” she said. “Then I feel like I did after I fell over that culvert back…oh, let me see, I think it was the year your brother Lawrence wrecked your father’s Volkwaggen Deluxe. He was quite a good  driver usually, but that day he must have been distracted. So to speak.”
                                      END-