By Tim Binnall
In an odd story out of the Netherlands, a 69-year-old man is attempting to legally change his age so that he will be twenty years younger. Motivational speaker Emile Ratelband reportedly brought his strange case to court this week arguing that changing one's age should be allowed since people are permitted to legally alter their name and gender. As such, he believes that there are grounds for his legal date of birth to be shifted forward twenty years to shave two decades from his age.
As to why Ratelband is pursuing this bizarre course of action, the reason is not all that surprising: he wants to improve his love life. "When I'm on Tinder and it says I'm 69, I don't get an answer," he lamented, "when I'm 49, with the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position." Ratelband also suggested that his advanced age is preventing him from getting work as well as getting a mortgage to buy a house and assured the court that, if he is successful, he'll forfeit his pension because he'd be 'too young' to collect it.
Whether the case will be settled in his favor will not be known for a few weeks, but it appears that the judges presiding over the matter weren't exactly sold on the idea. One magistrate mused about what one might call a philosophical quandary should the courts simply erase two decades of Ratelband's life. "For whom did your parents care?," the judge wondered about his time during those hypothetically 'lost' years, "who was that little boy then?"