How Old is Your Character?

This month, I am trying to Think Like a Writer and write 750 words a day, practicing my writing, much like a musician plays scales daily.

When you introduce a character, do you say something like this?
John Doe, age 37, trotted down the street.

The question is how old is the character and how does the reader KNOW the character’s age?

Today, write about 5 characters, that’s about 125 words for each character. Make the characters ages 5, 15, 25, 55 and 85. The reader should know the ages simply by the description. It might be physically how they look, how they move, something they say, or where they are found on a Saturday night.

The cliche is wrinkled skin and gray hair, of course, But we will go beyond the cliches, won’t we? Because we are thinking like writers!