Four days before my 25th birthday, I boarded a nearly empty plane and made my way to the exit row. As I tightened my seat belt for takeoff, a flight attendant placed a hand on my shoulder. “Excuse me,” she said. “Because you are seated in the exit row, I just need to check — are you over 15?”
I had to laugh before telling her I’d been at least 15 for almost exactly a decade. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” she said. “You’ll appreciate looking so young when you’re older!”
I have been getting this reaction to my age for as long as I can remember. Once, I was mistaken for an orphan after explaining that I hadn’t lived with my parents for four years. Another time, a bartender was so disbelieving that he called his manager down to be sure that my ID was real. He, in turn, called down his manager. It took 20 minutes for them to be sure I was of age. “You just look young … you’ll appreciate it when you’re older,” they all said.
You should have seen the looks on their faces when I showed up at the Heavy Shop at South Pole Station three years ago to work as their new general assistant. I’m sure the mechanics were thinking, “What is this? Bring your daughter to work day?”
It hasn’t always been an annoyance. My young-looking face definitely helped me out in Mexico. In the rural villages of Michoacán, young women traveling alone were virtually unheard of, but unmarried women, even more so. Many Purhepechan girls marry at 15 or 16 years of age; to be older than 20 and unmarried was to be something of a social pariah. Over and over again, I heard the same questions: Are you married? Are you a student? Pues, que haces — what do you do, then?
“It’s all right,” they said. “It’s not too late. We can find a good boy for you while you’re here. How old are you? 17? 18?”
“I’m 23,” I said. Oh. Their shocked faces said it all: Clearly, I was a hopeless case. After that I kept my mouth shut and let them all believe that I was a slightly slow 18-year-old, and probably engaged.
Everyone approaches birthdays differently. Some of my friends begin announcing them weeks in advance, planning huge parties and several days of celebration. Another friend does his best to hide his. “I always end up having a bad day on my birthday,” he explains. “There’s too much expectation for the day to be special. The less people who know about it, the better — I don’t like having people fuss over me.”
Some people dislike their birthdays because they fear getting older. One woman I know has celebrated her 38th birthday several years in a row now; I have no idea how old she really is. In another year or two we’re going to have to start celebrating it as an anniversary of her 38th birthday instead of her birthday itself.
At a certain point, though, a lot of people begin to like birthdays again. As my dad says, “Getting older sure beats the alternative.” You can’t argue with that. More important, age connotes dignity and respect, both things that are earned with the years. Trust me: As someone with a youthful face, I’m well aware of the sliding scale of age-based respect. I see this acted out in community college classes all the time. The young kids straight out of high school get yelled at for mouthing off, but the mothers in their 40s and 50s who are going back to school? Short of throwing things, the sky’s the limit, and they’ve still earned the right to be called “ma’am.”
“I’m flying to Cincinnati tomorrow, and I’m pretty sure my hair clip will set off the metal detector,” my mother told me in a recent phone conversation. “But I don’t want to mess up my hair, so if it does, I’m just going to tell them, ‘It’s probably my barrette and, no, I don’t wish to remove it.’ I love being in my 50s!”
At the rate I’m going, I’m going to have to be well over 60 before I can start pulling off something like that.
For my birthday, I plan on going out to dinner with my friends — something between a huge party and a don’t-tell-anyone-it’s-my-birthday affair. But 25 or not, I know this much: If I want a celebratory cocktail, I’d better not forget that driver’s license. In fact, bringing my passport as a backup might not be a bad idea.
Meg Adams, who grew up in Holden and graduated from John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor and Vassar College in New York, shares her experiences with readers each Friday. For more about her adventures, go to bangordailynews.com or e-mail her at meg@margaret-adams.com.