The answer turned out to be 60, so we both qualified for a discount, of the grand sum of one dollar each - my first official old-age-related concession.
Mind you there's still five years to go before the Gold Card and the big bonanza of universal superannuation.
I hope to live that long, although I'm worried that just before I totter to the finish line, the Government will move the tape, the way a sleeping cat always uncurls and saunters off out of reach just before the baby manages to crawl close enough to pull its tail.
The age at which state-funded retirement should be set is either a matter of principle, or of personal interest, depending on relative wealth, age and gullibility.
The principle is about balancing the national books more fairly because an anticipated superannuitant boom will leave comparatively fewer younger workers to bear the tax burden.
Government book balancing is an arcane semantic exercise designed to persuade voters that one party is more financially articulate than others. For instance, governments seem able to run a surplus and a debt at the same time; something we mere mortals dare not try at home.
Were successful governments indeed the brilliant financial managers they always claim in order to gain control of the treasury benches, they might have resisted the temptation to use superannuation as a political football, heeded demographic warnings of the imminent grey tide of ageing baby boomers, planned wisely, invested a percentage of the income tax, GST and all other taxes by any other names - such as duties, fees, and levies - paid by a comparatively larger workforce over the last 60 years, and be sitting on a nice fat super fund by now.
Much easier to point the finger at the elderly, imply they're a burden and mount a seemingly moral crusade on behalf of youth than admit financial mismanagement.
It grieves me to have to side with PM John Key and Winston Peters - neither of whom I'd normally be seen dead agreeing with - who oppose raising the age of entitlement.
If the age must be raised to save the national bank balance from dire collapse, the suggestion made by Peter Dunne (another politician with whom I am embarrassed to concur) of a sliding scale of entitlement - from 60 on according to need, life expectancy and physical fitness for work - would seem fair.
And those who have valiantly chain-smoked for 40 years, thereby contributing heroic tobacco taxes to national coffers - $1.3 billion pa, way in excess of smokers' health costs at $3 million pa according to the latest Treasury report - and who have defied all odds, rampant ostracism and graphic warnings to reach senior status in the national flock of smokers currently farmed for fun and profit by the Government, deserve special early consideration.
