Forever 21

I was carded yesterday, by a young thin-bearded attendant who felt he had to double-check the spelling of my name on the band's guest list.  No one else's name was being checked.  Could it be that the young man thought I was younger than  twenty one?   Younger than my daughter?

For years, I was carded everywhere I went.  There was this particularly humiliating episode shortly before my 40th birthday, when I had been invited to speak at a professional conference and the waiters had refused to serve me a glass of wine.   I had left my driver's license in the hotel room and ended up making a fuss, demanding that if I were to be carded, the whole busload of seniors who had just walked into the restaurant needed to be carded as well.  I flicked my "SPEAKER" ribbon in the face of the restaurant manager.  I eventually got a glass of Pinot Noir. 

I can't pinpoint the exact date things switched. 

It must have been about the time someone called me "ma'am".  I thought that  "Ma'am" was a joke.  It sounded so serious to me, so matronly, proper, partental... early!   Eons too early.  My mother was a "ma'am".  My grandmother had been one. 

Me?  I barely felt twenty-one.  I'd been feeling twenty-one since my children were born.  No matter how old my own daughter got to be, in my heart I knew that time was standing still for me (and me alone).  But once that "ma'am" was dropped into my eardrum,  it seemed that all the young people I was hiring had been born on my high-scholl graduation day.   I was being asked to move on. 

I've been thirty-five since.  It think it's a decent age; just past carding but not yet achy in the joints.   I am planning on remaining thirty-five for as long as my daughter feels twenty-one.  I am in no hurry to take another step, not even for an easier glass of wine. 

Comments

[willie]

What I wouldn't give to be carded. :-)