n. def. Age ain't nothin' but a number ... ?

XX: I began worrying last year, when the cute pre-frosh started trickling in. I was a sophomore, they were still in high school-was I allowed to hook up with them? Granted, I didn't, but I still felt sketchy flirting. This year I feel like it's totally taboo, what do you think?

XY: Part of me genuinely believes in the "half your age plus seven" rule. But then, high school pre-frosh fall into that range-high school pre-frosh the same age as my sister. And if one of my friends hooked up with my sister, I would not be happy.

XX: No guy would, even if his sister were his twin, I'll venture to say. That's not a good test, although I don't necessarily think "half your age plus seven" works, either. There is no way in hell I'd hook up with a 17-year-old guy. Seventeen-year-olds are barely guys!

XY: How many times must double standards rear their ugly heads? Still, I know just as well as you that a senior guy hooking up with a freshman girl may raise eyebrows-but it's not a "never have I ever" question the way any freshman guy hooking up with a senior girl is.

XX: I don't want to point out the obvious here, but freshman guys hold less appeal to me than freshman girls do to you. Freshman guys lack the seeming innocence and freshness that make freshman girls such a hot commodity. Older guys, on the other hand, are hotter guys.

XY: You forgot the part about freshman girls not yet having had time to gain weight. But I don't accept this whole business about young guys being inadequate. As much as I hate to admit it, there are smooth freshman guys out there-

XX: -they may appear smooth to you, but by and large, I see right through 'em. Where guys want to map uncharted territory, girls generally prefer to take, as former faculty member Robert Frost called ... er, didn't call it, the road well-travelled. Not that I want a 60-year-old with old balls, but I'm not going to set an upper age-limit, even though I'm perfectly willing to set a lower boundary.

XY: While there just aren't as many virginal freshman girls out there as you seem to think, I agree they're a good find. Especially to date. Which raises a different question: even if you'd shrug off a senior guy-freshman girl hook-up, would you think less of him if he dated said freshman?

XX: I don't know. Probably not, I admit, but I'm ashamed to say that if a senior girl dated a freshman guy, I'd be a lot more dubious.

XY: Come now. You don't think the life experience differential between senior guy and freshman girl would play into your perceptions of the happy couple? I understand that sometimes it's only a two year age gap, but they're an important two years, don't you think?

XX: Yes, but at the same time I don't feel like I've matured much in the past two years. I still procrastinate, I still drink too much sometimes, I still hook up with mistakes ... I can hold my own with anyone under the age of 30.

XY: The question isn't whether you can now, but whether you could then? I, for one, think your unshakable confidence in your ability to "hold your own" belies your maturity. Alas, who wouldn't want to be the 30-year-old restauranteur dating "oh so barely legal" Ashley Olsen?

XX: You're right-I'm skeptical of any 30-year-old who would want to date me. But what does this make my father? He was 30 and my mom was 23 when they got married ...