One of the blessings of AS

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Well, I'm 39, I've been to the US twice in the past three years and been carded frequently when I was over there. I haven't been asked to prove my age that way in the UK, but I have had people my age assume I'm an average of a decade or so younger than them.

Funny, because when I was a kid people assumed, like Sora, that I was older. Then when I hit puberty, I matured early physically, but I still had the social/emotional awareness of someone much younger - disastrous! I spent much of my 20s trying to act a lot older than I was, and hating it.

Now, I suspect I'm still in a protracted adolescence. I dress, and am told I act, a bit 'teenage'. And a lot of the things that are supposed to be 'adult' concerns (having children, getting promoted, buying bigger and better Stuff) are really of very little interest to me.

sure.

Is this really a good thing though?

I've had people say I look younger than I am since my late teens at least. I hated it when my friend the same age could buy beer at 16. Since then I pretty much like it.

I look slightly baby-faced when I don't sport a beard. When I do, I'm frequently told that I look like I'm in my early 20's.

I'm the opposite, just to be different. Yargh. When I was 15, I was served in a bar (the minimum age for buying alcohol here is 18.) Now that I'm 19, people often think I'm in my early twenties. In fact, some people have said that I look older than my sister, who's 25, but she looks younger than her age. Confusing or what?

Ouch, you sure do know how to read people.

I retired last January at age 69. Shortly after, someone who doesn't know me very well commented enviously, "I hope I can retire in my fifties, too."

I was carded going into a bar when I was mdi-thirties. The young soldier with me, not yet of age, was not carded.

I once had a deputy sheriff threaten to arrest me for using my father's driver's license. I had a wife and two kids at home.

Pops

Typically I seem younger, but it tends to vary now. The first thing my aunt told me when she saw me after ten years (I was 16 then) was that I didn't look that age at all. People don't know if I'm graduating high school or college now, and yesterday the guy cutting my hair said I looked "a lot older" than eighteen which kind of disturbed me because he sounded odd when he said it, like I looked older in a bad way.

However it seems that people in high school and college are showing less of a difference now. I have coworkers that are 28 and I keep forgetting they aren't getting their undergrad degrees.

I'm 43, but I appear considerably younger to most people. One person told me I looked like a high school student. I could stand to lose a few pounds, but I still have a fairly petite build. I owe my youthful appearance to good health habits.

Nah they guess me fairly close, sometimes older.

Then again, I am a smoker which puts on years

I plan on quitting soon though, so I may look younger later on in life.

I think it's true, but as far as I know, there is no research on the phenomenon yet.

People will often lie and tell people they look younger than they really are as a compliment. If you tell someone your age and they say, "Oh! I thought you were younger!" that's often a knee-jerk politeness thing.

You can tell you really do look younger than your real age when it becomes a disadvantage, or anything other than a compliment. Like when a MUCH younger co-worker says, "I don't listen to you 'cause you're younger than me!" Or when you get carded all the time. Or when you get refused entry to a bar because they think your ID is fake or belongs to an older person. Or when you tell someone you're moving and they say, "Oh, why did your parents decided to relocate? Did your dad get a new job?"

All of those things have happened to me. But I'm not convinced that I really look much younger than I really am in a general physical sense. I think it has to do with non-verbal communication.

People say that I have innocent-looking eyes. I think that maybe my posture and stuff like that is more consistent with an age group about 10 years younger.

If it really is a non-verbal communication thing, most aspies could indeed look a lot younger than they are in reality. I think that non-verbal communication plays a more significant role in a person's appearance than people (especially aspies) tend to realize.

"I don't look young for my age; I look precisely my age. Everyone else seems to have aged prematurely".
-- George Bernard Shaw

Interesting thread...

I've been told my whole life that I look young. I have a picture of me at 16 from highschool, and people often told me I looked 8 in it @_@

I don't get it so much anymore when I've got a beard going, but every time I shave it people go "Wow, you look totally different. You look a lot younger that way."

Fortunately, though it is noticable, my gray hairs seem to have no impact

Apparently people think my mom looks young too, because sometimes they'll mistake her for being my wife One nurse once even said "Oh, excuse me, you just both look so young." o_O