I’m not even eighteen. I’m twenty-eight years old and I am tired of being carded. And I don’t drink!

I was oh so glad when they installed the ticket machines in the movie theater. It spares me the inevitable “can I see an id?” when I go to the movies. Now, maybe on one of my more clean-and-fresh days, I will give them twenty-one… but seventeen? Seventeen? I didn’t look seventeen when I was seventeen!

And now that the ticket machines have spared me movie carding, I am still not free of it. I still get what I like to call “virtual-carded”. I just went to the doctor’s office and before the woman would hand me my paperwork, she said, “how old are you?” in a tone that clearly implied she thought one of my parents should be filling it out for me.

Now, people keep telling me that I should be glad people think I’m ten years younger than my age, that one day I will be grateful for a youthful appearance, and one day I expect I will be. But now, right now, it’s aggravating, because it discounts those ten years that I have ninja-warriored my way through. I’m ten years wiser than you think I am! I have life experience people! I am not seventeen!!!