Intimidating?

Students in my Tax Policy Colloquium sometimes join our dinner group after the sessions. Three who are considering coming were thinking of coordinating to come as a group. When I asked why (not that there's anything either wrong or surprising about that), I was told that, to the solo attendee in a significantly younger age group, the likes of me can seem intimidating.

"Who? Little old me?" I believe I answered. The underlying thought being that, if you've seen as much of me as I have - meaning a full lifetime supply of lows as well as highs - it feels intuitively, however myopically, as if people oughtn't to feel at all intimidated.

Then again, this is certainly an advance on how I felt while in law school - I probably would have needed a large cash payment to consider voluntarily attending dinner with most of my professors at the time.