Once upon a time...

I was young. I looked young, felt young and probably even acted young (it's the privilege of youth to be stupid, I think). In my very first year of teaching, I took a group of eighth grade girls to a science for girls conference at a university. While at said conference, the teachers were on a break from their session (the girls were in theirs). I went to the restroom and a professory looking woman saw me in the hall out of the corner of her eye, whipped around and said, "Young Lady..shouldn't you be in your session!?" My face turned really red as I stammered, "But, I'm the teacher." I'm not even sure she believed me, but said sorry nonetheless. Nowadays, I would have said to her quite triumphantly, "Absolutely not, but thank you sooooooo much for the compliment!" Subtracting a couple of decades doesn't hurt my feelings. Ever.

There were many times during my first years of teaching when I was mistaken for the high school helper in my class. Parents said at conferences, "You're the teacher?" I was the youngest member of the staff. I had absolutely no street cred at all.

So it was today while at Walmart (I was picking up groceries before the inevitable snowing in forecasted for the weekend) that I put a bottle of wine (for cooking of course, Mom) on the conveyor belt to the register. I had my license all ready to go because I am almost always carded when buying cooking wine. When the prompt to ask for age of the buyer came up, the cashier looked at me skeptically and actually asked, "Are you under 40?" Like she couldn't decide whether or not I was. WHAT!?!? When did that become something someone would ask me? Do I look over 40 to you? WHAT!? I'm afraid I was a little abrupt (sorry nice cashier lady)when I answered/shouted so the people behind me could hear, "YES I'm UNDER 40 and HERE IS MY DRIVER'S LICENSE SO YOU CAN CHECK!"

George Burns said "You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old." So theoretically, I shouldn't worry. The actuality is that in about five minutes I am going to be checking for wrinkles and slathering my face in Olay while holding back tears. Happy Friday to me!