It's all in the arithmetic

It was funny when Jack Benny, deep into his 60s, claimed to be 39, and who hasn't heard stories of 19-year-olds with fake IDs trying to buy beer?

We're talking about you, Brett.







Between the extremes of young people wanting to be old and old people wanting to be young, most of us settle down and acknowledge our ages, even if we don't always act them.

But now and again, along comes a fool who just won't own up to how many years he owns.

Meet Emile Ratelband.  He's 69, but he claims that he identifies as 49 years old.

Oh. Well, Emile, sometimes I identify as Jerry Lee Lewis, even though the only keyboard I pound on has 26 letters instead of 88 notes.

It's better to be who you're supposed to be, and not fake an age, which is right up there with combovers and facelifts in the How Pitiable Can You Get? competition.

Not a surprise, Emile, a Dutch retiree, wants to shave off two decades so he can A) go to back to work  and B) make it with lots of women from Tinder.

Yeah. You look 49 like I look like Bradley Cooper.

His arguments, which probably sounds a lot like the bloviations many will hear from funky uncles on Thanksgiving, is that if transgender people are allowed to change sex, he should be allowed to change his birth date.

After all, Emile avers, he has the body of a 45-year-old.  Doctors told him so! 

Ratelband said: "I have done a check-up and what does it show? My biological age is 45 years. When I'm 69, I am limited. If I'm 49, then I can buy a new house, drive a different car. I can take up more work. When I'm on Tinder and it say I'm 69, I don't get an answer. When I'm 49, with the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position."

So he has filed legal papers to get his local government agencies (in the city of Arnhem in the eastern Dutch province of Gelderland) to amend his age on legal documents.

The judge hearing this absurdity (he didn't mention his own age) says he understands the "if transgendered people can do it, why oh who can't I?" angle, but brings up one of his own: What about the years between 1949 (when his mother bore him) and 1969 (when he began boring us)?

Stand by for news from the Dutch courts.