Jail bait

(In reference to my last blog "the sixth grader in the 11th grader's body")

When I was younger, I looked much older than I really was.  Without getting into too much gorey detail, we'll just say I hit puberty in about 5th grade and "developed" rapidly from there.

Now here's the flip-side: when I graduated high school, I started aging backwards.  Or stopped aging.  Whatever you want to say.  When I was young: "(to the 13 year old) are you going to be a junior this year?" Me: No.... "(to a 15 year old) so did you pick a college?  You graduate this year, right?" Me: Noo....

But suddenly: "(to a college freshman) so which high school did you transfer to? You're still in high school, right?" Me: Noo....  "(after of college) So you're still in college, right?  Are you a sophomore?" Me: Noo....

Yeah, it got bad.  Once, when I was 24, I went to the Mall of America and actually got carded because it was after curfew...FOR SIXTEEN YEAR OLDS!!  Geez....  that mall cop was embarassed.

But, I think the most hysterical case of mistaken age happened 2 days after my sixteenth birthday.

It was the summer of 1998, and we had fairly new neighbors my parents had befriended.  At this point, they'd been friends for about 5 months.  I'd been at their house for dinner several times, they'd been over to our house, etc.

Well, that night they asked us over for dinner (he was an amazing cook) and told my parents to make sure that I came along because her youngest brother was in town and they wanted to hook us up, so to speak (of course they said something like date).

If you read my previous post even a bit carefully, you understand that I was very excited at the possibility of fresh meat.

So we went to their house.  And I met the brother.  He was cute.  Very cute.  But right away I knew something was off.

He had a beard.

And I thought, "I don't think this guy is very close to my age..."  But I waited to see.  We sat on their patio overlooking the Lowes Creek bluffs and chatted about life.  My dad asked him where he went to school and what he was up to this summer.

Well, you know he had quite a busy schedule since he had been interning in South America after graduating FROM COLLEGE!!!

That was enough for me.  I headed into the house where Jim was preparing dinner and sat across from him at the counter.

"Hey, so what do you think of Julie's brother?" he asked with a grin.

"He seems nice," I replied.  "How old is he?"

"24," Jim said casually, pushing peices of beef, garlic, onion and rosemary, all soaked in red wine onto skewers (I told you he was a good cook!! It makes my mouth water just thinking of it...)

"Oh," I said finally.  "How old do you think I am?"

"21," he shrugged.

"My birthday was on Thursday, you know,"

"Yeah, happy birthday by the way,"

"Thanks.  I turned sixteen,"

The poor man's jaw dropped and he nearly dropped the food.  He looked one inch away from cardiac arrest.

"Yeah," I shook my head, once again in disbelief that someone could so grossly mis-judge my age.  "That's just not going to happen."

Pretty sure that's illegal :)