There was a time when I thought I was like everyone else. Years passed, I got older, and so did everybody around me. By the time I was 18 I looked, well, 18. It wasn't until shortly after that I realized that something was different about me, about the way my body worked. Throughout my 20s I was teased for having a baby face, always getting suspicious looks from bartenders and liquor store clerks. I put off going to college until I was nearly 30, but none of my classmates knew unless I told them. My high school friends would always ask why I still looked exactly like my yearbook photo, and I would shrug and say, "Good genes, I guess". It was odd, but a 28 year old who looks 18 isn't the strangest thing.

What is very unavoidably strange, however, is a 48 year old who looks just like their high school yearbook photo. By that time, it had been clear to everyone that something was going on. I had married my college girlfriend, who was shocked at the time to find out I was 7 years older than her, not realizing our relationship would only become more uncanny with time. Our one son had a high school photo of his own now, in which he looked slightly older than his father. I had had a hard time in high school, so I always figured my son would struggle with the same issues. What I didn't count on was the publicity, the tests, the extended periods of absence from my family. Being a fairly inquisitive person, I was as interested as anyone to understand the exact nature of my rare longevity. Modern science wanted to know as well, and thanks to the public's interest in my story, I was able to participate in the study of my condition as a collaborator more than as a subject. Still, as answers continued to allude even the top scientific minds, test became more involved, more time-consuming. My wife, God rest her soul, stood by me at all times, even though it was clear to me she had come to feel overwhelmed by the ongoing science project she married. Unfortunately, our son was a different story. It was always clear to us that he was an intelligent and compassionate human being. In his early years he excelled in school and was well-liked by his teachers. But as interest in my case started to ramp up, I could tell he resented all the reporters and scientists always coming into our home, tying his dad up in endless interviews and evaluations. He especially hated the long trips, when he would wail and cry at night, convinced that something would happen to me while I was gone. That's what his mother told me he did, anyway. By the time he hit high school he was in open rebellion, tanking his grades on general principle, disrespecting the faculty as a rule. He never dropped out, maybe because school gave him the opportunity to escape the home he felt had been tainted by outsiders, but he failed to graduate by the end of four years. After easily obtaining his GED, he came to me and told me he was leaving, and then he did. He moved to the city and fell in with some kind of art collective before finally enrolling in community college in his late 20's, just like his father. From there he studied hard, transferred to a 4 year, and after years of hard work in an engineering program, got a good city job that sustained him for years. I wish I had known all of this was happening at the time, but I didn't learn it until years later, the last time he and I spoke.

I'm gonna add onto this later because I have some more ideas and I haven't gotten to 5 life stages, but it's late and I've been drinking and it's finals week and I really shouldn't be doing any of this.