Adam’s Rants: I’m Not THAT Young

I have, what I think is, a common situation with my wife. I am older than she is. Specifically, I’m about 4 years older than she is. I could be completely wrong about this, but I think that it is fairly “normal” for the man in a  relationship to be slightly older if the couple aren’t essentially the same age. Anyway, I mention this because I have been cursed with eternal youth and to this day still get carded any time I have to purchase anything that may require ID (primarily alcohol.) My wife on the other hand never gets carded for anything. It’s not like she looks like she’s older than me or something. She doesn’t. She doesn’t really even look her age, at least to me. But she does look like she’s older than 21. Come on! We have 4 kids! Our oldest is a 3rd grader. Mathematically we would have to be over 21. My wife gets horribly upset when she decides to buy wine and she doesn’t get carded for it. I on the other hand get carded every single time, and I’m 4 years older than she is.

  I’m not one of those people who gets hung up on age. I am one of those people who thinks that age is really just a number, and legit believes it. (Not in a pervy way of course.) Again, my siblings and I have been cursed with eternal youth. I think we come from some long lost line of Irish vampires or something. Not one of us can pass for our actual age. In some respects that’s great. In others it’s kind of annoying. Aside from the previously mentioned carding for everything. There is a serious tendency of people to disregard me professionally because of my apparent age. In 13 years as a restaurant manager, nobody ever took me to be the person in charge. People always assumed that I was just some other member of the crew. Every time someone would ask for a manager I would get a sort of scowl from them when they realized that the skinny young guy was the one in charge. Then I would get the most obnoxious question ever, “where’s your manager?”  Every time I would have to fight back my Irish temper to not punch them in the throat as I tell them, “I am the fucking manger bitch!” But then I remember that I’m actually good at my job and a professional. So I climb out of my, JD from Scrubs, fantasy of throat punching and inform them that I’m the GM, and on with the interaction.
I say I’m cursed with eternal youth because interactions like that have plagued me for my entire life. Just for reference: I’m 33 years old, I’ve been married for 9 years, have 4 children, and was a restaurant manager for 13 years. But to this day, I still have to deal with people in the world talking down to me like I’m some dumb kid. Just the other day I was picking up food from a drive thru, and the guy handing me my food said, “Here you go young man.” Again, my brain goes to throat punching. “Don’t young man me. You are maybe, 5 years older than me at best,” I would have said if I were a more confrontational person. But that’s completely normal in my life, but as I get older and it keeps happening, it’s really wearing more and more on my patience.
  I never thought I would look forward to getting old just so that I wouldn’t have to show my ID to buy alcohol, even though I’ve been able to do so legally for 12 years now. Maybe some day I’ll be able to take my wife out to dinner and neither of us will get carded for our adult beverages. I just hope that day comes before my boys have to worry about this curse as well.

ODO Ep 12: What’s My Age Again?

Tonight I planned to talk about harvesting oranges, the craziness of the weather this winter, and the full blown force of El Niño. Fortunately I did NOT spend 30 minutes talking about the weather and got sidetracked into complaining about HOA’s. I also realize that I am terrible at perceiving the basic passage of time, or my age, or whatever age I’m supposed to be.
• It’s winter time. That means harvesting season for the citrus in Arizona. I’ve been slowly working on picking all the oranges from my tree. I’ve gotten about 150 lbs down already and probably have another 200 to go. In the mean time winter has officially reared it’s head and there are blizzards in some parts of the country. Northern Arizona has actually gotten 30 inches of SNOW in the last week. Some towns are nearly inaccessible because of the ice and snow on the mountain roads. Of course down here in Phoenix that just means it’s been raining for 4 days straight with 40 degree temps. I realize that is warm for a lot of places, but for us here it’s damn cold.
•Because I can’t complete a thought, HOA’s suck. Pain in the ass organizations that make something as basic as checking your mail or mowing your lawn difficult. I don’t need somebody telling me how my house should look. Going along with HOA’s are the “snowbirds” that run them, all the old people who basically fly south for the winter because they live in cold places. I dunno, I’m not a fan of humans migrating seasonally. They may try to act nice, but they are the most nit-picky old bastards who will ever live next to you for 3 months a year.
•Time is a funny thing. Time and age are relative. I have to remind myself from time to time that I am actually an adult with a wife and 4 children. Then I have to remember that I’m 31 and that is actually perfectly acceptable. I think about my age in relation to other things like my children or my younger siblings and then I really feel old. Then I remember how old my big sisters are and it’s not so bad. I think about my dad (65) in relation to my youngest brother (18) and think he’s old. Then I’ll remember that my oldest sister is 37 and it’s suddenly not so bad. Again time and age are all in how you perceive them.

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