Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

I have ended up here, because I managed to earn myself a bonus year of life.

Somewhere between October 13, 2016, and October 13, 2017, I convinced myself that I was 37, and not 36, years old. During a trivia game with some friends, I was asked my age. Having never been one to shy away from repeating the figure, I confidently replied that I was 37, to which my astutely mathematical friend responded that, since I was born in 1981, this was incorrect. In line with modern customs, I promptly asked my smartphone assistant to tell me my age. “You are 36 years old, Gregg,” the assistant responded in a slightly unsettling, motherly tone.

OK. So, I was never going to be a late-blooming mathematician, but, I did score a bonus year and that was pretty neat. It was August 2017, so I had up until October to figure…