There’s little better on a rainy Sunday afternoon than curling up with an old, familiar movie. Especially a funny one with a hint of mystery to it. This weekend, I spent it with Topper Returns. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself the favour. It’s one of the mid-century public domain screw-ups, so it’s really easy to find, if not always in the best print, and it’s a blast. I’ve written about something like half the cast for Attention Must Be Paid. Topper always reads to me like one of those men who’s clinging to the title middle aged despite pressing up against the borders of old. In this viewing, I noticed that he announced he was 46.

Now, I’m not yet 46. My older sister is, though, and I will be in a couple of years. And as it happens, Roland Young wasn’t 46, either; he was 54. Whether the character was lying or younger than the actor, I don’t know. But it is one of the weirder things about aging. You’ll be watching a movie or TV show you’ve loved for years, one with a character you have always thought of as old, and suddenly, you’ll realize you’re older than they are.

This happens a lot more often when you’re young and feels less weird; what you’re realizing is that your perception of old was wrong. After all, kids can think people in their twenties are old. (I quizzed my kids; the answers from them are “like fifty something” and “I don’t know!” Then again, we’ve always been open with our kids about how old we are.) When you are seventeen and realize that seventeen isn’t as old as you thought it was when you were five, well, that’s normal. That’s how life goes.

What I’m talking about is partially tied into the idea that we age differently now than people did decades ago, which I’ve also written about. I’m years older than Dean Jones was when he made The Love Bug, a movie in which he’s canonically washed up. No one would consider someone not yet forty old and washed up in most careers now. Gymnastics, maybe, but yeah. If you watch a lot of old movies, you will turn out to be older than the characters sooner than you would expect.

Still, I’m now older than Angela’s parents on My So-Called Life. I am older than Barney Miller at the beginning of Barney Miller. I’m older than Perry Mason at the beginning of Perry Mason. And I grant you I never thought any of them were old, but it’s still something that takes a bit of adjusting to. I’m almost the same age that Lorne Green was at the start of Bonanza, which is going to take some processing even though I never watched that show. I’m older than Vivian Vance was at the beginning of I Love Lucy. Still got twenty years before I catch up with William Frawley, though.

It’s an inevitable part of ageing; I am now the age was when my father died, for example, and the idea that I will be older than my father ever got is a startling one. (Especially since, in a few months, my son will be the age my older sister was at the time.) It’s weird enough that I am almost always older than celebrities I’m hearing of for the first time even when they aren’t child stars. It’s weirder that I am now about the same age that Bob Eubanks was when I was a kid and thought of him as being around forever. He turned forty a week after the first time he hosted, which I grant you I don’t remember but I was myself pretty much actually a baby at the time.

So sure, that still means I’m nearly forty years younger than Bob Eubanks. And he’s still around, unlike Roland Young, so I’m a lot more aware of that. (We actually went to Disneyland the day Lorne Green died—the two were unconnected—which is a weird thing to remember.) But these people are preserved forever as the age I am . . . or younger . . . and they leave booby traps in pop culture that we all come across now and again.

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