I am twenty-five years old. Well, technically, I&#039m still twenty-four, but because my birthday is so soon, I&#039m just going ahead and saying twenty-five for now before I forget when my birthday actually does come to pass. So, we&#039ll just stick with twenty-five for the rest of this post and you&#039ll all understand one way or another regardless of the couple weeks&#039 difference.

Wednesday, I somehow managed to get to SMWC early enough to actually plop down before class and rest a while. Actually, I got there way too early, so I got bored after a minute and broke out my German book to look over the next chapter. Since I was there so early, I couldn&#039t go into the French classroom because there was a class in there already, so I sat on a bench conveniently located about twenty feet down from the room. There was a girl already on the opposite end, and another girl came out of the Spanish classroom to join her since we were in front of the Spanish room&#039s door. They chit-chatted, and I read over the vocabulary list which was all about food, thinking about how I wished I&#039d eaten more for lunch. Then the second girl looked over at what I was reading, not being able to see the cover or words, just the picture and format, asking, &#034Do you guys have a different Spanish book than us?&#034 I looked up at her and then held the book&#039s cover up so she could read it, and I said, &#034No, this is a German book.&#034 Her look got more perplexed, and she asked, &#034Do we even have German here?&#034 The first girl replied with no, and I clarified for her, &#034I&#039m a grad student at ISU. I&#039m taking German over there; I&#039m just over here teaching one of the French classes.&#034 At this, her eyes grew wide and she laughed. &#034You&#039re a grad student? I thought you were a sophomore or something!&#034 This earned a blank stare from me as I tried to figure out how anyone could mistake me for a nineteen year old, and I replied, &#034Uh, well, I&#039m twenty-five, actually. I guess I just look young.&#034 Both girls agreed then went off in their separate directions, and I went to my French class to teach. Nineteen!

Thursday, I was in my syntax class sitting between my friend from India, Ameetha, and my friend from Taiwan, Eartha, when the discussion concerning nominal infinitive phrases and gerunds somehow branched out into talking about the cartoon &#034School House Rock.&#034 Ameetha actually was the reason this discussion started, and since there are few Americans in there (and two other Americans who were in there are several years younger than me), no one besides Ameetha, Dr. Phillips and me had ever heard about School House Rock. I suppose it had come up because we were talking about what makes a noun and there&#039s some song about it or something. Ameetha stopped her explanation partway through to ask me if School House Rock had ever been on TV. I told her that my family owned a couple of the videos (Dad now owns the DVD), but that I had never actually seen them aired on TV; perhaps they were on other stations or at times when I wasn&#039t watching. Ameetha insisted that they had been aired on TV as cartoons (I wasn&#039t arguing with her, but she was insisting anyway), and then she asked me, &#034You know, they showed them back in the 70s.&#034 Mind you, Ameetha isn&#039t much older than I am, but somehow she assumed that I was older than her, older enough to remember at least something about the television programming in the 70s. After my initial confusion as to why she&#039d assume I&#039d remember something like that, I realized she had no idea how old I was, so I proceeded to explain, &#034Ameetha, I was born in 1979. What&#039s more, I was born in December of 1979! We&#039re talking the butt-end of the 70s. There&#039s no possible way I could remember any of that!&#034 This earned quite a few laughs from the rest of the class, and Ameetha laughed saying something about how she could have sworn I was at least a year or two older than her, putting me at about twenty-eight. Twenty-eight!

Needless to say, I&#039m all balled up about how I must appear to the people around me. For those who know me well, they may know my age but think I act young (because I do a lot of the time), whereas people who don&#039t know me as well must base my age off of either my appearance (e.g., the girls at SMWC) or by my intelligence/experiences (e.g., Ameetha who thinks I know too much to be young). It&#039s all really quite confusing and silly, and it got me to thinking as to which would be better: forever being carded at rated R movies and liquor stores because I don&#039t look old enough, or to forever be asked questions like, &#034What was disco like?&#034 or &#034Did they have computers when you were a kid?&#034 <Sigh> Guess this is what comes of being born between Gen X and Gen Y, eh? The hermaphrodite of generations – a little X and a little Y.

Posted: November 19, 2004 at 1:30 pm