Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-28162607-20170103120839/@comment-28162607-20170106161943

Nightlily wrote: As for Neal's age: We don't actually know for sure whether he was 23/24 when he met Emma. All we have is the flyer, and while we've all, myself included, assumed that it is meant to represent his biological age, it's never been confirmed. Except we have never had any other indication of his age. As I've said before, he arrived in our world when he was biologically 15 then was able to:

Learn perfect shoplifting techniques for the 21st century

Know how to trick cops

Know how to pick 21st century locks

Learn to drive and hotwire a car (despite never seeing one before)

Know about border control and the legalities that come with it

Get and keep a job at a high end jewellery store then lose it "a few years" before meeting Emma

Obtain at least one form of ID which enabled him to pass background checks for said job (and had the money to do this and have known to do all this)

Learn to navigate a completely foreign world which was thousands of years ahead of what he grew up in.

Pull all of this off convincingly enough to fool everyone around him

You really think he did all that in 5 years? Really 8 years is a minimum.

If the wanted poster wasn't his DOB we'd have been told that