When Does "Young" End?

I'm in my very early forties.

People generally think I'm between 30-35; I have about six grey hairs, few wrinkles, and this is apparently one area where being not-thin comes in handy -- keeps you from looking drawn.

I don't feel terribly different from when I was in my early twenties. This is good and not good. I've only gotten marginally more stoic as time has gone on. However, except in a few cases where I was always curmudgeonly, I'm pretty much as open and flexible about things as I always was. (My curmudgeonly spots will show as time goes on, but here's an example: I hate hearing English butchered by native speakers who have no learning disabilities to explain it. Always have. But that's because I've been in love with language since I learned to read as a toddler.)

Anyway, I was just looking at the Faithful Citizenship site from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. There's a section for Young Catholics, and I was drawn to it like I'm always drawn to things for "young adults." (Turns out it seems to have been meant for Catholics so young they can't vote, not the 18-24 sort of demographic I was expecting. But anyway.) Maybe it's because I'm unmarried and have no kids, so many of my life concerns are not the same as those of most of my contemporaries. I'd give my right arm to be back in school, which I always loved. I also have no fulfilling career and still somehow am looking for my way in life, although in the meantime I'm a productive member of society.

So in some ways my life is pretty much where it was at 25, except I've been married, I've added about six or seven breakups, I make more money, I have no parents left, I've been to Hawaii and Paris, and I live alone instead of with a housemate. Oh, and I couldn't cook at all at 25.

It's funny, too. I've seen pictures of my 41-year-old father holding me as a baby. If I were to see a man today who looked like that, I'd put him way into his fifties. People just seem to age differently, carry themselves differently, project themselves differently, than they did forty years ago, whether they're married with kids or not.

So when does young end, anyway?