My parents, I suppose, would say I am blessed, blessed with this curse of a youthful face. For they know what it's like to start growing older, to feel younger than they look, to have to remember fondly the last time they were carded while buying a bottle of wine.
I, on the other hand, have not yet reached that point. Rather, I'm trapped in basically the opposite situation. Though I am indeed twenty years old (twenty and a half, to be a little more accurate), I learned this past term that most people assume I'm sixteen, tops. And that, my friends, is a little disconcerting.
First, I started getting carded at R-rated movies; I couldn't even see "Erin Brockovich," of all things, without having my age questioned. Then, a few weeks ago, I was at a restaurant with my family, and the bartender was serving the women first, in order of age. Though he was clearly moving from oldest to youngest, he served my fourteen year-old cousin before me. Fourteen.
Still, I wasn't necessarily offended, just fascinated. When a relative later said, "So, have you learned how to drive yet?" I didn't think much of it. Naturally, I supposed, since he thought I was sixteen, it was a perfectly reasonable question.
And while visiting my grandma in June, I overheard her friend say to her, "Twenty? I would have guessed she was fifteen or sixteen." The "she," of course, was me.
I guess that's when I started to get a little concerned. I'm not sure what exactly is so bad, but something hasn't been sitting right with me ever since I got this idea stuck in my head. Even my parents and best friends agree that I look freakishly childish, so by the time I got to school a few weeks ago, I was sufficiently freaked out.
However, I'm slowly learning that being sixteen can be a great excuse for things. If I'm exhausted and want to go to bed early, no one can make fun of me. I'm only sixteen; I'm growing; I need my rest.
If I don't know how to do the Astro One lab and can't deal with trying to pay attention to the explanation, you can't blame me. I'm sixteen.
I can't be expected to make any real decisions or to think about the future, because I'm only sixteen years old. I shouldn't be asked to deal with such stresses.
With my mom and aunts visiting this weekend, I took the opportunity to have a little fun. No one else seems to appreciate the excitement, but I had a great time going undercover as a visiting high school student by taking a tour of the campus. Not only did my family enjoy the chance to learn about Dartmouth, its history and my life here, but I, too, had a fabulous time.
I got to snicker about the necessity of DOC Freshman Trips, which "almost everyone takes" (except me, of course, as a longtime non-hiker with a bad attitude). And I learned that each student stops by the beloved Collis at least once a day. Sadly, I couldn't interrupt the tour with my horror stories of that confusing building.
But my tour guide was great. She actually made me feel thrilled to be a student at a place like this. For one of the first times ever, I felt truly lucky to be walking across the green (and pretty guilty for accidentally locking the entire building of Sanborn right before the tour).
So now I'm starting to kind of like my youthful identity. I like this childish view of life, the view I watch in my younger cousins, who try to be friends with everyone they meet, who want to take classes and learn about everything, who would go swimming every single day if they could.
And suddenly, I understand how people my parents' age feel. I wish I were sixteen, so I could dream of coming to a place such as Dartmouth and appreciate things without the self-consciousness and worry about the future that accompanies me at twenty. I almost wish I were younger than that, so I could go swimming everyday, too.
With this ridiculous reflection, I feel particularly at ease with poetry homework; I should, like Wordsworth, spend my time celebrating and trying to recover the magic and energy of childhood, a time in which the world had "the glory and freshness of a dream." But, "it is not now as it hath been of yore."
And, for good or bad, my recent time spent in the past has taught me these Wordsworthian lessons for myself. I never expected to dream of the "good old days" at age twenty. So I guess I may play sixteen a little longer I'll take advantage of this curse for as long as it lasts.
