age

[lil-cosette.livejournal.com]

how do you know how old you are? it's easy to know how old your body is: just count birthdays (or subtract years)... but if you aren't the same age as your body, how do you tell? i was reading about the 'lilspeak', and i don't use it - but then i started wondering if i even count as a little: how old is too old to be a little? and how do you tell how old you are?

i hope nobody gets upset about this question - i just want to know!

Comments

[mysidia-system.livejournal.com]

Some in our system do not know their age! Some don't know it and don't bother to try to guess it either.
We use the term "little" for those who are 6 and younger. Each system has their own set up, though. There is no set cut off of when you're not longer "a little", that's up to you and yours!

[lil-cosette.livejournal.com]

Is it important to know your age?

[mysidia-system.livejournal.com]

It doesn't matter what is important to my system. But if you must know age isn't important to most of us. Though littles like to know their age just to be able to say "I'm 4 and 4 is bigger then 3!" :) It matters what is important to your system. Is it important to YOU to know your age?
Some of ours use a birthday to count years. Some are age sliders and just know by their appearance. Some just assign themselves an estimated age.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Knowing your age is as important as you want it to be-- some people in here don't have a defined age and don't really care. For others, it's an important part of their identity. There's also age-sliding, in which someone can sort of 'move around' in age-- they don't become different people; they're still the same person, but at a different age.

[idianshire.livejournal.com]

Most of the people within our community that stopped getting older chose for one reason or another to do so. This usually means they know their age. There are a number that don't, but since we can see each other, we can usually make a guess about an age group.

I don't think age is important. Actually age for us seems something weird most of the time. We know how old we are because of the whole dates on a calendar deal. Born in 68 so I will be 37 this year. But aside for the maths I don't feel an age, I don't actually feel any older than I did when I was 20. We tend to have more interest in life cycle phrases, or how we see that

[viatar.livejournal.com]

i can certainly relate to that. Sometimes i wonder if i've managed to slip out of the timestream completely; time keeps moving, but it often feels like i'm not included in its inexorable march forward. This body will be 35 this year, but i haven't aged since about 23 or so; funny thing about that is that the body hasn't aged appreciably, either. It's always amusing to get carded for age-restricted purchases, and then see the face of the clerk when they do the math and realize just how old i actually am.

That said, it seems like age is most important when one is young. For illustrative purposes, the person to whom we have unanimously given ourselves is 23: about 12 years younger than our own physical age. If we were 6 years younger when we'd gotten involved with Her, it would have invited legal complications; 12 years ago, it would have been an unspeakable crime to be involved with Her. As we get older, age, and differences in age, become less important.

[kasiya-system.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on the individual. Quite a few in our group have given themselves a specific age that they feel fits them. Others, well it's like they are in "age groups": infant, young child, older child, pre-teen, teen, young adult, adult, elder, etc. We figure that much can be determined and from there an age-range can be figured out. Like a young child could be from ages 3-8 or so. A teen would be from ages 13-17, or whatever ages would work for someone else. Some in our group consider an adult to be age 15 and older; others would go by the U.S. law of 18+ being an adult.

We feel it can be a personal thing to determine one's age. It's about discovering more of who you are.

-Jenilee & more

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

Age--for multiples or non-multiples--is arbitrary at best. The original inhabitant of this body used to be annoyed at how children were treated with less respect than adults, and assumed to not be able to be responsible for themselves. The term 'a self-renewing underclass' comes to mind.

Age... the main purpose of age is as a rough guide to how experienced you are. When one's subjective age is completely unrelated to the body's physical age, a number...

*rubs head* Argh. Haven't been sure how to finish my sentences recently. One's mental age having nothing to do with the body's physical age, a number means very little. There's no 'baseline', no ground to measure other things against, and all a solid number can do is function as a general approximation of one's mental maturity (very general, since different people are differently mature at the same ages).

To sum up: an age--for us--is a number that one can choose to represent one's mental age, not a number that applies to one whether one knows it or not. However great the importance attributed to it, it is more a custom than an attribute. Or rather, an... actually, this is getting unnecessarily complicated.

Hmm. Hope this will be helpful.

[wylddelirium.livejournal.com]

Funny you should be thinking about that, when a long-time resident of my system just requested "their own birthday party" last night, in a month other than the body's birthday.

[pthalo]

our body is 21. I feel a little bit older than that, mid 20s. When someone in 3d tells me they're 25-29, I think "oh, my age." though it depends on how they act i guess.

[echoesnspectres.livejournal.com]

We really don't know how old we are "internally". We're autistic and gifted, which is probably a factor in this. Some feel older than body age, some feel mature but "ageless", and kids/teens will say things like "I feel like I did when we were 14, but I don't know how old I was then". With some of them it seems like they are just very busy catching up.

[changelyng14.livejournal.com]

we really arent in agreement on that one :P
for alot of us we have no idea to go about figuring it out, but most we can guess a maturity ballpark.
a couple of us have birthdays, mostly based on what we project as the day they came into awareness.
a few of us care about age, and a couple of them cant make up their mind how old they want to be :P