Residents at a senior living community were asked to nominate their favourite age.
The answers moved from first cars and childhood triumphs to finding love when it was least expected.
What was the best age of your life?
It sounds like a simple question. Ask someone who has lived for more than 90 years and there is an awful lot from which to choose.
Residents at Carrington Court Assisted Living and Memory Care in Utah, USA, were asked to nominate their favourite age for a series of social media videos.
One woman did not hesitate.
“25,” she said.
Her reason was equally immediate: her father had bought her a convertible for her birthday.
“I just drove it and drove it and drove it,” she laughed.
Another resident chose 17 or 18, when a project he made on his father’s lathe won first place in a competition.
One woman could not select a single age. Her children had been busy with their lives, she said, while she had remained busy enjoying her own.
Then came the answer that changed the mood.
A man nominated last year.
Asked how old he had been, he initially could not remember. He was now 94, making his answer 93.
“Because I had no interest in life until this wonderful woman here brought it back to me,” he said.
The camera moved to the woman sitting beside him. Her favourite age had been 63 because she had been looking forward to retirement.
The videos have prompted other seniors and their families to share their own stories.
One person wrote that her widowed aunt had remarried at 94 and was now 99. Another said her mother met the love of her life at 80 after moving into assisted living.
The answers included childhood farms, hopscotch, babies, first love and the freedom of retirement. One commenter refused to choose at all: youth brought music and first loves, children brought another kind of happiness, and later life offered money, time and fun.
There is plenty of research attempting to establish whether happiness rises, falls or follows a U-shaped curve as people age.
The residents at Carrington Court gave a better answer.
The best age need not be the year someone left school, married, bought a home or started a family. It might be 25 and a new convertible.
Or it might be 93, when someone sitting beside you makes life interesting again.