Post #200: Beep beep

Hey! This is my 200th post! Rock on.

During the last few months of my pregnancy, I enjoyed a brief hiatus from being honked at by dudes in cars. Though Mrs. Gerbil would beg to differ, I've never thought of myself as particularly attractive. The extra forty pounds made me feel even less attractive (again, Mrs. Gerbil would beg to differ), so I was glad for the lack of honking.

A staple of my post-partum summer wardrobe is the nursing tank top. I highly recommend these things. It's been beastly hot, humid, or both over the past few weeks, so I'm even more thankful that these tops exist. They provide excellent coverage. But I'm finding that when I go out on my bike, I'm getting honked at again. One time an SUV full of male 20-somethings honked, wolf-whistled, and hey-sexied at me over the course of about 3/4 of a mile. I was sorely tempted to flip them a very ladylike bird, but I decided that ignoring them was probably the best policy.

But when I slather myself up with sunscreen and take Tovah out in the stroller for various errands, the last thing I expect on our walks is to be honked at.

And yet it happens. Like, every time.

I would think that, from an evolutionary-biology perspective, men in their reproductive prime would not be interested in women with babies. After all, the baby's presence should suggest that there's a father somewhere--i.e., competition. (For the sake of argument, we shall not consider the possibility that the baby has two moms. As far as I know, humans are the only creatures with the capacity for family-building by artificial insemination.) Men with babies, however, should be a big huge draw for women in their reproductive prime, for these guys basically advertise their sensitive, protective nature.

Here, too, Mrs. Gerbil begs to differ. She thinks that men in their reproductive prime should be very attracted to women with babies, as the baby is proof of fertility.

Then again, perhaps the baby has nothing to do with it. Maybe it's just all about my awesome tank tops--and my (baby-nourishing) honkers.

Public transit story #23: You're hotter than these pretzels

Mrs. Gerbil and I took Tovah on her first overnight trip this past weekend, to visit Grandma and Grandpa Gerbil. A very fun time was had by all!



(Moo, I am sorry we didn't have time to look you up... but once you move to Phila., getting together will be even easier!)

On our way back today I had this fantastic conversation with the man selling soft pretzels, nuts, Swedish fish, etc. at the Trenton train station. He looked at least old enough to be my father, if not my grandfather; and English was decidedly not his first language.

"I help you?" he asked.

"I'd like a pretzel, please," I said.

He handed me a gigantic pretzel braid ($2.50) instead of a regular pretzel twist ($1.25) but hey, I love my Philly soft pretzels. Then he asked, "Why you so beautiful?"

I held out a $5 bill and flashed what I hoped was a "please stop being an ass and give me my change now" smile. But Mr. Smooth Soft Pretzel Man ignored the five and repeated: "why you so beautiful?"

"Genetics, I guess," I said, waving the five a little.

"You have lucky man," he said, finally taking my money and opening the register oh-so-slowly. "Give me his number. I call him." Smoooooth.

"There's no man," I said.

"Give me his number. I call him."

"I don't have a man," I repeated.

"I don't understand."

"No man," I said. "I have a woman."

"I don't understand."

"Never mind," I said. I held out my hand for my change.

He took the hint about the change, but not the one about his not being my type. He asked for my--excuse me, my nonexistent man's--phone number again, but I thanked him for the pretzel and walked away to join my wife and child.

On postpartum adjustment

The other day I tried on a few pairs of pre-preggo pants. I've been wearing regular tops since coming home from the hospital on Friday, but pants are of course another story. (Come to think of it, pants are pretty much always another story.)

I know that one loses a significant amount of weight in the first week or so after delivery, but I'm a little weirded out by the fact that, six days after giving birth to cuteness, I could again wear a pair of pants I purchased in the girls' department at JC Penney.

Oh, and here is cuteness at 1 week old:

Assumptions

My cubicle is strategically located by the breakroom. Thus, lots of people stop to say "hi"... but apparently lots of people also stop to check out my decor when I'm not there. And when someone introduces him- or herself to me at work, I usually hear "I love looking at all the decorations in your cube!"

So I will fall into conversation with this person. This person will ask when I got married, where I got married, etc. It's also pretty obvious by now that I am pregnant--I've gained almost 20 pounds (a little more than one-sixth of my pre-pregnancy weight) since late July, and it's pretty much all out in front--so we talk about pregnancy and babies and morning sickness and things like that too.

And then this person will ask what my husband does for a living.

In my cubicle I have six framed photographs. These include 4x6 prints of my two best friends and me, my parents and me on Wedding Day, Mrs. Gerbil at the zoo, our phenomenal but lazy-at-blogging cat, and my cousin and me. There is also a 5x7 print of Mrs. Gerbil and me on Wedding Day. In this picture we are wearing our big bridal gowns and our matching floral hair garlands, and we are toting identical bridal bouquets.

Make no mistake: this is not a picture of two sisters in a double wedding. This is a picture of two chicks getting married to each other.

(What makes this question even more bizarre is that the only man in any of these photographs is my father. If I had a husband, wouldn't you think I'd have some pictures of him up on display?)

So I tell this person that I have no husband, that this (here I point to the aforementioned 5x7) is my better half. And this person will apologize profusely and say things like "This is San Francisco; I should really know better than to make assumptions like that."

I should say so!

Smooth

Grocery store cashier: Do you have a twin sister?

me: Huh?

cashier: It's not often that we get such beautiful customers... [observing my wedding band] ...and I see you're already taken.

me: Sorry, I'm an only child.

cashier: It was worth a shot.

Confession: I am the world's biggest lightweight

I'm allergic to California.

Well, I'm allergic to a lot of things in a lot of places, but California is home to some special type of grass which, I believe, was created especially to torture me. Allergy testing has shown that, indeed, I am ridiculously allergic to California grass. California grass decided to bloom on Tuesday.

Holy crap, did that ever suck.

I broke down and took some Benadryl before going to work. Benadryl and I have a very strained relationship. I will not take the stuff unless I absolutely need it, for it gives me a hangover. Thus: I won't resort to Benadryl unless I'm miserable because it makes me miserable in a completely different way.

Yes, folks, I am a diphenhydramine lightweight.

Between 11 am and midnight, I took one and a half adult doses of Benadryl. I took just enough at work to prevent both sneezing and falling asleep during calls; and enough at bedtime to give me the soundest, most excellent sleep I've had in weeks.

But late Wednesday morning I was still having difficulty forming my thoughts into coherent paragraphs. In the middle of the afternoon, I retreated to bed and took a nap. Mrs. Gerbil called during my nappy-nap and asked for a ride home from BART. On the way there I started to wonder if maybe it wasn't a good time to operate a car or other dangerous machinery, as I couldn't focus on anything less than three car lengths ahead. Against what better judgment I should have had, I didn't hand over the keys for the ride home.

By 6pm I was dizzy and ready to go back to bed, but unlike previous instances I decided that perhaps this was not the best course of action. It had been 18 hours since Benadryl last touched my lips, more than 2 of its half-lives, and this wasn't my usual hangover. I called the NurseLine that comes with our health insurance and was advised (a) to call my doctor and (b) not to get back behind the wheel. So I paged the provider on call, who informed me that (a) there should not be any Benadryl left in my system; (b) even if there were, there's no antidote; and (c) I should probably never take Benadryl again.

Being reminded yet again of my eternal lightweight status made me a very sad, and somewhat embarrassed, sleepy little gerbil. So, Mrs. Gerbil took me out for a nice Italian dinner. We discovered tiramisu to be quite an effective antidote. They don't call it "pick-me-up" for nothing!

In sickness and in health

Mrs. Gerbil and I have been thinking (perhaps obsessively) about little gerbs. Conveniently, I've just begun a new job that will not only help fund the production of little gerbs, but also provides much more affordable and comprehensive health benefits. This job is very pregnancy-friendly, and at the moment there are several pregnant or recently post-partum people on site. This is all very good news for the two-member Committee on Gerb Production.

Our new health package includes full coverage for preventive care. Fantastic, I thought, because prenatal care is, by its very nature, largely preventive. But then I asked someone whether prenatal care is covered as preventive care, and I was sorely disappointed to hear that it is not. And then it dawned on me: Like most other health plans, our shiny new one considers pregnancy a sickness.

To be a covered "sickness," pregnancy must have its own diagnostic code, at least for purposes of billing. In the ICD-9 (the current US standard), the diagnostic code for normal pregnancy is V22.2. Anything diagnosable is de facto abnormal, and thus normal pregnancy is abnormal.

("Okay, okay," you are saying, "pregnancy is a departure from normal bodily functioning, so isn't this diagnosable sickness thing warranted?" But humor me here.)

Sickness is by definition bad. Nothing good can come directly of sickness. Sure, you might have a renewed appreciation for life if you survive a serious illness or injury; but the most positive direct result of sickness that I can think of is that once you've had the chicken pox, you are almost guaranteed not to have a repeat performance.

And yet every single human being that ever was is the result of pregnancy. Perhaps you are a cynic and believe that human beings are no good. But hey--you wouldn't be around to hate your fellow human beings if not for pregnancy. Which, I hasten to add, is diagnosable.

Now I shall blow your mind some more with my, well, mind-blowing logic. Even in our enlightened times, women are expected to want to have children. Those who do not want to have children are, at least in some circles, considered abnormal.

Thus: In order to be considered normal, you have to be considered abnormal.

I rest my case.

Public transit story #10: I like the way you move

Yesterday we went to Emeryville, home of the big-box retailers. Emeryville boasts (among others) Ikea, Borders, Home Depot, Old Navy, Gap, Office Max, Babies 'R' Us, and Michaels. Emeryville has movie theaters, a California Pizza Kitchen, a P.F. Chang's (don't get me started on how I got food poisoning from my first and only P.F. Chang's meal), a multi-ethnic food court, a Denny's, and of course the Swedish meatball cafeteria at Ikea. Emeryville also has an Amtrak station, some scientific industry, a cafe co-owned by the bass player of Green Day, and a whole lot of condos.

On the way to Emeryville, home of all that is commercial and shiny, we happened upon a lovely gentleman. Although perhaps I should say that as we were standing around at the bus stop, (im)patiently waiting for the #57, this dude blurted, "Hey, are those Doc Martens?"

"Yeah," I said, "the only pair I've ever owned." This is true. I have never been able to afford Docs, and then I saw a pair at Shoe Pavilion for $40 and I just had to have them.

He smiled.

A few minutes later, the guy piped up again: "They're nice."

"Thanks," I said.

The bus came. My wife and I headed to the back of the bus and took two inward-facing seats.

This fellow passed up a few other empty seats in order to sit right across from us. He stared at my shoes. "Those are nice," he said again.

I smiled and looked away.

Then: "I like them, how they move. With the toe part."

I had no idea what he was talking about. My Docs are Mary Janes. The tips move when I move my toes. They're not, like, motorized or anything. Or independently ambulatory. This was all starting to creep me out, so I pretended I couldn't hear him over the noise of the bus.

Then the dude got this big grin on his face and said, "Yeah, that's what I'm talking about! MM-HM!" I looked down and saw that I had been wiggling my toes out of sheer nervousness.

The next stop, thankfully, was ours.

I suppose it could have been worse. Had he also been a frotteur, I would have had to fend off ambush footsies.

Hot stuff

I have never really thought of myself as a particularly attractive person. Perhaps this is some self-esteem thing. Or perhaps it's from years of being teased for being short and dorky-looking. I don't recall ever thinking that I was ugly, just not pretty. For a long time I thought I was overweight, but I wasn't. Then, for a few years, I was indeed a bit larger than I should have been because my metabolism had been pharmaceutically hijacked. My wife and I disagree as to whether I was "huge" (my opinion) or "curvy" (hers); but at least we agree that I was larger and sleepier than usual.

So now, for the first time in my life, I am... skinny? thin? slender? svelte? (Can short people be svelte?) And sometimes I catch myself thinking, hey, I am kinda cute.

But then some testosteriffic dude in a beat-up red pickup truck wolf-whistles at me and it ruins my moment.

These men do not seem to grasp the concept of keeping their eyes on the road. They actually hang their heads out the window and rubberneck (in my conservative pants and shirt) as they drive, very very slowly, past me. This is so not cool. I am surprised it's not caused an accident yet.

I wish people would pay this much attention to me when I'm trying to cross the street. Crosswalks make me completely invisible.

My wife's theory is that guys notice me because of my hair, which is almost to my tailbone and in severe need of a trim. I think this might cover about 50% of these incidents: People coming toward me can't see my hair until they've passed me, and I get hooted at from all directions.

Why does it bother me, all this hooting? you might ask. If I feel pretty, oh so pretty, then why don't I care for cross-gender interrater reliability? I will admit that, on account of some early experiences, I can get really scared by men who think with their men-parts. I will admit that I actually kinda liked it when I got a "heeeey..." from two women in a Subaru. But I see a big difference between a genuine "you look nice today" and a catcall. Especially when the offending party is operating a car or other dangerous machinery.

But what frightens me the most is that I am routinely mistaken for jailbait, and these dudes all look at least 25 or 30. When I put aside my feminist indignations, I am just plain grossed out. These guys probably think they're ogling a 16-year-old.

So, gentlemen. Keep your eyes on the road. That means off my ass.

Ecce homos!

I marched in the San Francisco Pride Parade today. Well, to be precise, I participated in the San Francisco Pride Parade today, but my contingent had a big yellow school bus as its float, and I rode in the bus. And despite years and years of instruction about not sticking body parts out the bus windows, I happily exercised my adult right to stick my head and arms out the window so as to smile cutely and wave at folks on the sidewalk.

I must have been smiling and waving awfully cutely, because there were all kinds of official video and still cameras pointed right at me as I was hanging out the window. There was one video guy who was not very subtle about this. He trained his big ol' camera at me and walked sideways for a bit, matching his pace exactly to the bus. But after about a minute and a half, I got very uncomfortable with this arrangement; and so I pretended to get distracted by something inside the bus. He lost interest in my cuteness immediately.

This year marked my first San Francisco Pride experience, and my second Pride ever. My first Pride was in Cleveland in 2004. Yes, they do have Pride in Cleveland, just on a smaller scale than San Francisco and with far more protesters. I remember there being a whole throng of protesters around E. 9th, just before the end of the parade. Said throng brandished a variety of decidedly un-Christian signs, along the lines of "Jesus hates you... and your little dog too!" I didn't see a single protester along the parade route here in San Francisco. I did, however, see tons of happy heterosexual couples encouraging their toddlers to wave (or outright flapping their little arms for them) at the leather daddies, topless women, and drag divas.

After the parade, my wife, my friend, and I headed toward the Castro, in hot pursuit of food. A slightly disheveled man observed my wife and me holding hands and said, "If this is the future, I don't want to see it!"

My first impulse was to shoot back, "I hope you die young, then!" But I was with my fine church-going wife (who'd just finished marching with her fine church), and I was embarrassed to say something so mean in front of her.

By the time I'd thought of something better--"Go crawl back under your rock until Pride's over!"--he had taken his slight disheveledness somewhere else.

But dude. Not only were we holding hands in the gayest city on Earth; not only were we were holding hands in the gayest section of the gayest city on Earth; but we were holding hands in the gayest section of the gayest city on Earth during the gayest weekend of the year. And he was surprised--nay, horrified--to see two chicks holding hands during his walk? Serves him right!

P.S. My wife had also wanted to express her best wishes for his early demise; but she didn't want to say something so mean in front of me. Great minds self-inhibit alike.

Warning

I swear, if one more person asks me at a bus stop whether I go to Berkeley High, I am going to tell him or her kindly to fuck off.

For the record, classes of 1997, 2001, and 2006, yo.

The dangers of being professionally gay

I went to the dentist today.

While I was waiting for her to come in, I happened to notice a box of Barrier Film next to the chair.

My first thought: "Dude, I bet that stuff would be really effective as a dental dam!"

My second thought: "That's because it is a dental dam."

Alterations

As much as I love new clothes, I hate shopping for them. I am small and short, but not at all proportioned like a 26-year-old. My limbs are just a tad too long for petite outfits, but too damn short for regular ones. I can hem up sleeves and pants all right, but the darts in the regular clothes are practically halfway down my ribcage. Juniors' sizes fit me the best, though I can't wear low-rise anything because of my aforeblogged lack of butt (thus ruling out half the department) and the tops certainly wouldn't help me look my age at the high school where I work (thus ruling out the other half).

I think what is stealing my butt is the 5 or 6 miles I walk to and from work. I work three days a week. On two of them, I walk a mile and a half to the train in the morning, a mile from my destination station to work, a mile back to the station at the end of the day, and then a mile and a half home. On the other one, I have to walk another mile between sites, both of which are a mile from the train station. On my way to one site, I pass by a formal gown store on a corner. It's never open at 8:45am, but it has the most amazing dresses in the windows, plus a great view of racks of other stock. I want to go in there sometime and try on the dresses. I don't need any more dresses, really--for one thing, I have no place to go--but they are just so pretty.

This morning, as usual, I walked past that formal gown store on the corner. As usual, while waiting for the light to change, I admired the dresses, imagining myself in some of them (and, yes, my wife in others). Those certainly are nice dresses, I thought. Very nice dresses. And then I noticed that one of these dresses had been altered for its mannequin in a most peculiar way. From a car, one would not notice the alteration, but from the sidewalk, I could peer around the mannequin and see that the bodice had been taken in by one of these:



Yes, a 2-inch steel spring clamp. But unlike the illustration, it had bright orange handles.

And the gown was hot pink. Couldn't they at least have found one that didn't clash with the dress?

My parents raised me to be savvy to social messages like lookism. When I was eleven, I churned out a one-page, typewritten treatise/rant on the dearth of intelligent female characters with realistic waist- and bustlines in mass-market cartoons. Around the time I Became a Woman, I began to notice not-so-subtle alterations in display clothes at the department store. (Not coincidentally, this was also when I had to stop shopping at Kids R Us and start going to the juniors' section.)

If you look at the average department-store mannequin, you will notice that the backs of its clothes are taken in, usually with basting stitches or safety pins. I was really angry the first time I saw a taken-in blouse on a mannequin. I mean, I knew Barbie wouldn't be able to walk if she were a real person, not because of her measurements (estimated at 39-23-33) but because of her freakishly tight heel cords. And the drawings in the pattern books at the fabric store weren't very realistic, either, but I dismissed those as artists' interpretations. The mannequins, on the other hand, displayed real clothes that you could find neatly folded right under them. Yet in a disgusting demonstration of the Thin Ideal, the mannequins were selling clothes whose smallest sizes were still too big for them! My G-d, people!

Not that mannequins would be able to stand up, either. Barbie doesn't hold the patent on freakishly tight heel cords. And at least all Barbie have heads, which is more than you can say for the average department-store mannequin. At least, until you rip Barbie's head off and discover her lone, bizarre, hot pink vertebral disk.

Dipstick.

It's unhealthy, the love I have for my car. I have sworn to myself, my wife, and this car that I will drive it until it absolutely, completely dies. My beloved Outback, a.k.a. the Big Gay Subaru, is almost eleven years old and still has its original clutch. It got its first new battery a year ago--not because the original went dead, mind you, but because it occurred to me one day that the battery was ten years old and it was probably time to get it replaced, if only on general principle. The dudes at Sears tested the charge before replacing it and asked me why I was having a perfectly fine battery replaced. "Because it's ten years old," I said. I had to say this a few more times before they finally believed me.

This car has a lot of rules to it. We turn off the lights, air, windshield wipers, and radio before turning the motor off, a practice which likely contributed to the longevity of the original battery. We do not put our feet up on the glove compartment, nor do we get into or out of the car if the emergency brake is not on (and, preferably, the motor is off). We do not leave things in this car that are not an ice scraper, the Club, the first-aid kit, or the Tupperware container for traction material. We do not eat messy things in this car. We do not consume any liquids in it that do not come in cups with lids, bottles with caps, or aluminum cans.

How much do I love my car? So much that I even had the airbags inspected last spring, "ten years after the manufacture date of the car" as suggested (in English and French) by the sticker on the sun visor.

When I got custody of this car, my dad showed me how to check and add fluids, how to take the hood cover (a.k.a. the Nose Bra) off and put it back on securely, how to check the tire pressure, how to use the tire pump that plugs into the cigarette lighter, and how to change a tire. I've never had to change a tire, but he had me practice lifting the jack, taking the regular tire off, putting the spare on, taking the spare off, putting the regular one back on, and lowering the jack enough times that I feel pretty damn prepared.



So yesterday I decided it was time to replace the front wiper blades. The rear blade was just fine, but the front blades were crappy to the point where it was easier to see in the rain if they weren't on. Off I went to the auto parts store. The last time I did this, across the country, there was a book in the wiper blade section where you look up your car and find the blades yourself, but at this store, there was no book; and the dude had to look it up in the Employees Only Computer. Armed with my "exact fit" blades, I went back out to the parking lot, only to discover that taking off the old blades is still a lot harder than putting on the new ones.

There I was, in my linen dress and embroidered blazer, jiggling the old blades around to release the catch, in full view of a 4-lane city street. I got the driver's side blade off and replaced all right, but the passenger's side one was harder. This middle-aged guy pulled up in a big shiny SUV, perhaps to return his movies at the Blockbuster next to the Car Quest. Then all of a sudden he was right next to me, asking if I needed any help.

"No," I said, "I'm just replacing my wiper blades, and the learning curve's pretty steep. I did the driver's side already--" and then, as if on cue, the catch released. "Well, thanks for the supervision!" I said cheerfully, and the guy walked away.

I'm not sure what it is about the combination of me and the Big Gay Subaru that is such an effective Middle-Aged Guy Magnet. About a year ago, when I was still living in Cleveland, I took advantage of a sunny winter day to get my car washed. (Those backwards Ohioans salt their roads, then wonder why their cars rust through.) I was already at the shopping center where the car wash was, so I thought, what the heck? Time to wash the car and return it to its rightful dark blue state. So I propped up the hood and set about removing the Nose Bra.

This middle-aged guy rolled down his window and said, much like a Yellow Pages ad, "Car problems? Need help?"

"Nope," I said. "Just taking off the nose bra so I can get my car washed."

"Need any help with that, then?" he offered.

"Um, no, but thanks," I said.

He shrugged and drove off.

Later, as I was putting the Nose Bra back on my sparkling blue car, another middle-aged guy rolled down his window. "What's wrong with your car?" he said.

"Nothing," I said. "I've just had it washed, and now I'm putting the nose bra back on."

"Need help?" he offered.

"Nope," I said, removing the hood prop and expertly dropping the hood gently into place.

If ever I were to wake up one morning and say to myself, "You know, self, what we are missing here is a Middle-Aged Guy" (note to my wife: this is never going to happen), all I'd have to do is drive to a random shopping center, prop up the hood of my car, and start memorizing the multilingual warnings on the battery. I'm good at memorizing things, but I doubt I'd get very far on it before my wish became reality.

Who peed in the fountain of youth?

I turned 26 a week ago. For some things, like opinion polls, I am now in a new age bracket. No longer am I "18 to 25"; I am now solidly "26 to 34." I'm smack-dab in my mid-20s. And I had hoped that people might stop mistaking me for a teenager. But no.

My job takes me to a high school one day a week. Through some mysterious process, certain students at this school are able to become "student TAs," which means that for one period a day, they are assigned to a teacher or an office and get to do really fun things like photocopying handouts and stapling packets. (I haven't seen anyone clapping erasers, but they probably do that too.) To make their photocopies, they have to go to the copy room. But they can't start any of the jobs themselves without permission from the woman who guards the machines. There are big signs on the wall that say things like

STUDENTS CANNOT USE COPIERS WITHOUT STAFF HELP
TEACHERS DO NOT COUNT AS STAFF

So I go in there once a week to make copies of all the random forms I have to fill out every time I have a session with a student. I have been at this school for two months. And the Xerox Guard has yet to remember that I am not a student.

Every Monday, I end up making copies while she's stepped out of the room. She comes back in, and the following exchange transpires:

Xerox Guard: Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah! You can't do that!
Me: [knowing full well where this is going] I can't do what?
Xerox Guard: You can't make copies without me! You are supposed to WAIT!
Me: Um, I'm staff.
Xerox Guard: You are not staff. You are too young.
Me: No, really, I am staff. I'm a guidance counselor.
Xerox Guard: Oh, that's right, you are the Young One! Okay, have a nice day.

Okay, dude. I am tired of being the Young One. I have always been the Young One. I skipped kindergarten and so was a year younger than pretty much everyone in grade school, except the kids with September birthdays who just slid in before the district cutoff. I had, like, thirteen thousand strikes against me in the Grade School Coolness Book, because not only was I young, but I was short, had glasses and bangs and two long braids, did Girl Scouts and orchestra and math club, and most damningly, was that perennial oxymoron, a smart girl. Back then, it didn't really matter whether I looked young. Actually, I didn't care what people thought of my appearance; as far as I was concerned, pulling up one's knee socks in the summer was dead sexy.

But I started to care one day during my senior year of high school, when I was chaperoning an elementary school reading tournament or some such thing. The architects who designed my high school must have been high all the time, for they thought it was a good idea to have a three-story building with two wings (East and West), where you could only cross over between East and West on the first and second floors. To go from 3 East to 3 West, or vice versa, you had to go down to the second floor cross-over and then back up to the third floor. To make matters worse, the odd-numbered rooms were in East and the even-numbered rooms were in West. Every September, unsuspecting sophomores would ask upperclassmen where the third-floor crossover was, and much wandering around in circles would ensue. It just wasn't the same when they renumbered the rooms...

Anyway, there I was, charged with directing kids and parents around this stupidly arranged school of mine, and one mother asked me whether I would be competing in the sixth-grade finals after the cookie break.

"Um, I'm a senior," I said. "I'm a tournament chaperone."

"Oh," said the mom, "you look so young! You will be so thankful when you're older."

That was 10 years ago. I found my first grey hair just before my 25th birthday. I think I've had maybe two more since then. Maybe if I had more grey hairs, I'd get taken seriously. I'm not sure how to give myself grey hairs, though, because I've been under terrible stresses lately that succeed only in making my butt way too small for my pants. (And I don't have a large butt to begin with, or even a medium-sized one. I think I must be one of a handful of women in the world who want a bigger butt. In its natural state, my sad, bony little butt does not get along at all with folding chairs.) One year at camp, my friends and I tried out to be the talent show emcees. Our skit involved Benjamin Franklin and clothes dryers. I forget how it all fit together, but anyway, Sherri needed her black hair to be grey, and Liz suggested that she accomplish this with deodorant. Sherri's hair turned grey, but it wouldn't turn back, even with a long, long shower. From the bathrooms we could hear her yelling "LIFE SUCKS AND IT'S ALL LIZ'S FAULT!"

Yes, this was gifted camp. Our unofficial motto was "Smart people have no common sense."

You know, life really sucks when your airplane seatmate asks you why you are flying to Cleveland, and you try to figure out how to tell him that you are going back to defend your doctoral dissertation. That you have been in graduate school for more than four years now, and that no, you are actually not a real-life, female version of Doogie Howser. That yes, you did start your program when you were 21, but you really have been in graduate school for more than four years and you are going to be 26 shortly after Christmas and that is the G-d's-honest-truth. Or when a girl who's just finished her freshman year at a college near your alma mater asks you if you're in town for the summer enrichment program at the university, and you watch her turn a frightening shade of pink when you tell her that you got your bachelor's degree while she was still in junior high. Or when you've just moved to California and are trying to get your new driver's license...

DMV Dude: Where did you get your first license?
You: Pennsylvania.
DMV Dude: But your form says you are currently licensed in Ohio.
You: Yes, I have been licensed in Ohio since 2002.
DMV Dude: Then how were you licensed in Pennsylvania?
You: Because I lived there before I moved to Ohio?
DMV Dude: No, but I mean how were you licensed in Pennsylvania?
You: Because I got my first license when I was 17, and I moved to Ohio when I was 22?
DMV Dude: But you were licensed in Ohio for the first time in 2002.
You: Yes, and I was 22 then. This is my third driver's license since I was 17.
DMV Dude: But...
You: I was born in 1980. Do you want to see my passport?
DMV Dude: Um, no, that's all right.

Perhaps that sixth-grader's mother was right, as is everyone else who's said the same thing since then: I will be thankful when I'm older. Mathematically, this is beautiful: When I was 16, people thought I was 11. I've truly aged 10 years since then, but I only look like I've aged 5 years. So when I'm 36, people should think I'm 21. When I'm 46, I should look 26. But damn, if some 25-year-old hostess cards me when I'm 40, I reserve the right to make a giant scene.

This high school I work at? I do have to give them some credit. I was sure I'd get carded when I went to buy a soda in the teachers' lounge, and I was met with not even one sidelong glace. I started to think I'd gotten away with something, but then I reminded myself: I'm staff.