"Which would you choose ...?"

So I told you I'm in Sticksville for a week-long management confab. Yesterday we all went out together to do something fun ... as a "bonding activity", I guess.

And for the most part it really was fun. Probably more entertaining than I would have come up with on my own.

Anyway over dinner one of our party -- a Chinese woman I'll call Walerie -- asked me a question: "Suppose you had to choose to marry a 30-year-old woman who looks 40, or a 40-year-old woman who looks 30: which would you choose?"

Of course I muffed the question completely because I was put on the spot: I stammered and mumbled and did everything except answer the question. Naturally you would expect nothing less of me, and I'm glad to say I didn't disappoint your low expectations.

But I thought about the question later and realized a couple of reasons that it confused me.

In the first place, the ages are too close together. 30? 40? Hell, I'm 53 ... they more or less look the same to me. OK, maybe not quite but they both look young.

Suppose I recast it as a 40-year-old woman who looks 60 and a 60-year-old woman who looks 40. That's a comparison that is more meaningful to me. But it solves only part of the problem.

The other part is that I keep stumbling over the looks as an issue. Why not just ask about a 40-year-old woman or a 60-year-old woman and stop there? Let them look their real ages. Then I'd choose the 60-year-old woman (all other things being equal) because she'd be more mature and more interesting.

There might be a couple of arguments in favor of the 40-year-old woman who looks 60. She's likely to be healthier for longer. She's likely to be the one who has to bury me, instead of vice versa. She should still look plenty sexy -- my experience with D and Debbie convinces me that 60-year-old women can have adorable bodies and only really show their age in their faces and necks. Below the neckline, the body is as luscious as ever. But most other guys won't know this, and therefore she won't have a lot of offers: this means there's a greater likelihood -- as Ben Franklin famously observed -- that she'll be grateful for my attentions.

I think I'll go back and tell Walerie that I choose the older woman, regardless what she looks like.