Guess Your Age booth turns CNE into Vanity Fair
Love it or hate it, game reveals lots about our narcissistic culture
Raphael Turpin has only worked at the Canadian National Exhibition’s “Fool Me, You Win! Guess Your Age, Weight or Birth Month” game for a week now, and has already been slapped in the face and yelled at by a possessive boyfriend.
“It wasn’t a full-on face slap, but it was definitely a slap!” he says after guessing a woman was older than her actual age.
“I guessed she was 31 years old but she was only 26. She was not very happy,” he says.
Likewise, I was none too happy when Turpin, who wrote down his guess on a piece of paper and showed it to the dozen people hanging around, guessed I was five years older than my actual age. (You only lose if they are within two years of your age.)
Older? Me, who is always asked for I.D. at the liquor store? I was left in a semifunk for the rest of the day, and no stuffed animal was going to make up for it.
“I’m guessing you’re the type who looks way younger than you actually are,” he said. “So that’s why I guessed 47.”
Then again, he was so off that the people standing around started to line up for their turn, simply to try and out-trick him and to win a prize.
So it was a win for the game and Turpin, at least, who started collecting the $5 bills from the numerous people who were standing around watching and now wanting to play.
Many people on my Facebook feed either love or are terrified of the Guess Your Age game.
“Yes! And they guessed me 14 years younger, so I won, and on many levels. The guy took a long time to make his guess and before he did, he took a very close look at my hands,” wrote one.
Another chimed in, “When I was 52, they guessed 37!” And another, “The year I turned 50 they guessed 35, and that made my day/year. But since the time I was 55 and they guessed 52, I’ve shied away. I still won the prize but it was too close for comfort.” And, of course, there were a lot of women who said, “I never do it because I’m always scared they’ll guess me older.” Jennifer McClune, who works alongside Turpin, has travelled with the game from the Calgary Stampede to fairs in Edmonton and Regina and now the CNE.
She’s more psychological than Turpin about the game and the people who play.
“People love the game because they want to know if a stranger thinks they look their age or weight,” she says. “There’s a certain amount of confidence you need to have to play this game. If you are that worried, you’re never going to play. If you do play, then you’re asking for it.”
She is aware that people take the game seriously, especially women. (She says she would have guessed me at 36, which would definitely have made me feel better.)
Both say they have about a 40-percent success rate in guessing age or weight accurately, within two months, or three pounds.
And, yes, there are certain tricks they use to guess. For McClune, her skill in guessing comes from on-thejob work. “I look at people’s hands, knees, if they have grey hair and who they are surrounded with.” (Note, I had my 14-year-old stepdaughter, 3year-old son and fiancé with me, so perhaps Turpin thought I was old enough to have a teenage daughter?)
“It is getting harder now,” says McClune, because of cosmetic surgery, Botox and simply hair dye.
Turpin says he always asks people to smile. “I can see the lines around their eyes and that’s usually how I base my answer. But I almost got into a fight over that. This boyfriend was really possessive of his girlfriend and he didn’t like me looking into her eyes for so long. He started yelling at me.”
He’s more serious about this game than McClune who also writes down people’s ages and shows other voyeuristic hang-arounds the number.
“But if I write down 55 and then a woman tells me she’s 38, I won’t show her what I wrote down and just take off the 20 years. That way, I make her happy and she wins a prize. And other people around want that same feeling, so they’ll step up to play. Which just means our game makes more and more money.”
The duo guesses the age of 500 people on an average day, which is $2,500 in profits a day, since the stuffed animals cannot be more than 50 cents.
And then psychology really comes into play. “If we are way wrong,” says McClune, “usually they want to immediately try ‘Guess My Weight.’ They always want to try and outtrick us.”
It is true. Immediately after Turpin guessed my age, five years older than I am, I immediately paid another $5, for him to guess my weight. “You’re wearing very baggy clothes,” he begins, so I’m not sure. I’m guessing120 pounds,” he announces.
My day just got worse. I stepped on the scale to reveal my true weight at 105 pounds. But what does he care about my feelings. In less than two minutes, he’s made $10 off of me.
Next up is a man with silver hair. He is asked to remove his baseball cap. Turpin guesses he’s 46. He’s not. He’s 40. But the player doesn’t seem disturbed, happy to get his stuffed tiger for his child, even laughing. In this game, men are from Mars and women are from Venus.
I’m starting to believe that this guesser is purposely showing onlookers a string of losses, as a heck of a lot more people start lining up, interested in making an easy win, or just setting them up for losing. Doesn’t matter, either way, the game makes money.
McClune does say it’s harder to guess the age of some ethnic groups. “Asian men and women, and African Americans are really difficult to guess because they usually have great skin, with no wrinkles.”
In our narcissistic culture most people like this game, even if they are obsessed with age and weight.
“It really is just plain fun for most people,” McClune says. “Aside from this one man, who weighed more than 500 pounds, and we’ve had a few of those, and I just wanted to guess them all down. I feel badly about it sometimes, especially if people seem really offended.”
But, hey, they are just doing their job, with a 40-per-cent success rate.