Peak Ages, Revisited

Back in May, Mike shared in his blog a fascinating chart titled "The Age You Peak At Everything, According to Science*." And in line with my demonstrated talent for taking off on ideas already introduced by other bloggers, I thought I'd go back and look at that chart one more time, and offer my own thoughts on it ...

First of all, speaking as a linguist, age 7 as the peak age for Learning a New Language sounds about right. I pick up languages pretty easily, but I started learning German in high school and Russian in you can tell how easy it is to speak Chinese because tens of millions of little children in China speak it perfectly well ... and it's because they learned it from their earliest years.

Life Satisfaction actually peaks twice, according to this chart - at age 23 and again at age 69**. I seem to remember being fairly satisfied at age 23, but haven't made it quite to 69 yet. However, closing in on age 66, I'm already pretty content with Agnes, my retiree status, my six grandchildren, my friends, my garden, and my other hobbies. Maybe I'm just ahead of the curve. Oh, and speaking of age 23, the chart says that it's the age of Maximum Female Attractiveness to Men. I'm not sure I agree with that, though, because I think there are a lot of very attractive women out there much older than 23. As the old saying goes, the major compensation nature pays to men for getting older is that every year there are more women we find attractive.

I don't understand Happiness with Your Body peaking at age 74 ... while I'm not a complete wreck yet, I think my body was a lot firmer and more attractive back around my 20s and 30s. Women tell me today that my gray hair makes me look distinguished, which sounds better than older than rocks, so I guess I'll take it.

Vocabulary is said to peak in the late 60s and early 70s (71 on the chart). I have my doubts about how accurate this is, given that the president is 71 and I'm not especially impressed by his communicative skills.

And finally, although it's not specifically indicated on the chart, but in the accompanying text, men's attractiveness to women seems to improve with age. However, as Mike reminded me in our exchange of comments on his blog, we've probably exceeded the allowable margin of age difference ... by a few decades.

Oh, well ...

Have a good day. Get ready to excel on schedule.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* You can see the chart in its original article with the original discussion and explanations on the IFL Science website here.

** I'm not going to make any jokes about 69 producing great satisfaction.

The July 4th Family Reunion

First things first ... I took a shot across my blogging bow from Mike on Sunday because my Cartoon Saturday post was late. Well, you can thank Blogger. I had prepared the Cartoon Saturday post well in advance (we were out of town for the weekend, as you are soon to read about) and set up the "schedule" function so that it would publish at 5:30 AM on Saturday. Needless to say, it didn't. My sister mentioned that she hadn't seen it, and when I discovered what had happened, I used my trusty iPhone to access the Blogger dashboard and brute-force publish the post. You can see it here in case you missed it.

The moral of the story is, don't trust the Blogger schedule function. It's worked for me in the past, but I don't think I can trust it in the future.

But on to today's post!

You may recall my mentioning that we were going to be headed to my home town of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the 4th of July weekend to enjoy a family reunion.  My father, my sister Lisa, and my brother Paul live there, my son Jason and his family were back in the States for a few weeks and staying in Dayton, and so Pittsburgh was a good central location for a get-together ... much to my long-suffering sister's dismay as we all descended on her home.  Here, for those of you who are not connected to me on Facebook, are the details and pictures of a wonderful weekend ...

Most of us drove to Pittsburgh on Wednesday. We arrived late in the afternoon, just in time to meet up with Jason's family and give me my first chance to hold our newest grandchild, Ava ...

On the Fourth, those of us who had arrived all congregated at Lisa's house to get reacquainted and visit with my dad, who got to play the patriarch and enjoy the attention of all his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Here, dad unsuccessfully tries to pretend he doesn't know Lisa, Paul, and I ...

... and this group photo was shot after Lisa found her tripod and I finally figured out how to operate the timer on my camera ... you will notice that Ava petulantly refused to look at the camera ...

My oldest grandaughter, Marcy, had asked me to bring along a selection of gourmet cupcakes from the famous Georgetown Cupcakes shop. I agreed to do so before checking to see how much they cost. I have never before bought (and am unlikely again to buy) cupcakes that required me to take out a second mortgage on the house ...

On Friday, we took all the children to Pittsburgh's famous and historic Kennywood Park for a day of fun. My granddaughter Marcy, son Matt, and I rode the "Bayern Kurve," which is about at my upper limit of speed and stomach churn ...

Granddaughter Elise liked the chain swing, and proved my father's old adage that everything works better if you hold your tongue right ...

And my niece Elena took my granddaughter Leya on the Whip ...

Agnes and I, our daughter Yasmin, and Leya and Elise left the park early (relatively speaking) in a state of near exhaustion, but the others all stayed long enough to watch the fireworks show and take in more of the death-defying rides.

On Saturday, we all packed up and went over to the nursing home where my father lives now, to give him a chance to show off all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren to his friends. We also got to see his famous tomato garden ... dad was once a world-class gardener, renowned around the neighborhood for his tomatoes, and my sister and her husband help him keep up his little garden at the home. The little stone tablet that reads "Bill's Garden" was made a year or so ago by his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who each "signed" it with their thumbprint ...

Dad also got a chance to confer with Ava and pass on some of his hard-earned knowledge ...

Later in the afternoon, back at Lisa's house, we broke out Cousin Eddie's traditional Redneck* Slip'n'Slide ... a marvelous do-it-yourself entertainment extravaganza consisting of a large sheet of plastic, a hose, a large bottle of baby shampoo, and the hill next to Aunt Lisa's house ...

Cousin Eddie not only engineered the whole thing, but he also got Tom Sawyered into letting Leya ride him down the hill ...

It was fun for children of all ages ...

After using the slip'n'slide, we had to wash off all the accumulated baby shampoo ... which was accomplished using Cousin Eddie's Monumental Power Wash. In this picture, my son Matt, grandson Joe, granddaughter Leya, and I take our positions ...

... and then get the full benefit of multiple five-gallon buckets of ice-cold water ...

Later that afternoon, Jason and Tabitha took Marcy, Elena, and Marcy's cousin Valerie to the Taylor Swift Concert at Heinz Field, while Lisa, Matt, and I rotated babysitting duties with Ava ... 

Agnes, of course, got in her Oma cuddling time with Leya and Ava (and all the other grandchildren) ...

On Sunday, before we had to leave to head back to Disneyland-on-the-Potomac, we had an early birthday celebration for our grandson Joe. You may not recognize him in the picture below, in which we were trying to prove that we are, indeed, an odd, yet fun, family.

And there you have it. I hope you had as fun and loving a holiday weekend as we did**. Yee-HAH!

Have a good day. More thoughts on Thursday.

Bilbo

* Rednecks are about the last social/ethnic group you can still talk about without getting sued.

** Except for the part about driving home via the Pennsylvania Turnpike and I-70 and I-270 with every car manufactured in the US for the last 40 years, all crawling at about 5 angstroms per fortnight ... the four-hour drive home took us more than seven hours!