my age dilemma

I'm not sure exactly when it started. . . perhaps in my mid-teens is when it became most apparent. Since then it has become progressively and amusingly worse. I am referring the tendency people have to think I am several years younger than I really am.

It is an interesting dichotomy: mid-teens and adulthood. Put them together in one person. . . And that's me! I get to see a little bit of both worlds. In one world, I have people talking down to me and then in the other world, I have people showing much greater respect. Often the transition happens in a matter of seconds.

Here are some of my favorite examples:

When Mom and I first moved up to Utah for me to begin school at BYU, we went to the our new home ward. That first Sunday Mom and I went to Sunday School and then Relief Society and afterward some of the members came up to my mom and asked her if I shouldn't be in Young Women's. They didn't think that I looked old enough to be in Relief Society! I'm just glad they weren't going to send me to Primary--though they did that later when I was called to be the Sunbeam teacher.

I still remember my first day in Honors 300 Advanced writing. Here I was just finishing up my sophomore year at the big and mighty BYU-Provo. I was just a bit nervous about being in an advanced writing for publication course. As I looked around, everyone seemed so much older than I was (I later learned that some of them were but quite a few were my same age or a bit younger). The teachers were going around handing out the syllabi. One of them walked up to where I was sitting, peered at me over the syllabus she was handing to me and said mid-sentence, ". . .and you look like you are too young to be in this class!" She was joking of course; and made that clear. We laugh about it now.

Probably one of the funniest experiences was just a month or so after my mission when my sole source of transportation from Mapleton to Provo and then around Provo was my bike and the bus. I was riding up 9th east one day, and I got to the intersection by the creamery on ninth. As I approached, I saw a crossing guard who I guessed was in his later twenties. He finished helping a student across the intersection in the opposite direction I was going and then he approached me. I was sitting there on my bike waiting for the light to turn. He came up and asked me if I thought I could cross the intersection O.K. on my own when the light changed. I assured him that I thought I could. He stood there for a minute though, looking at me and I could tell he was trying to resolve some sort of quandary in his mind . After a moment, he asked, "What grade are you in?" I smiled and realized what the problem was. . . "I'm actually a senior at BYU," I said. The light changed just at that moment, so I took off very much amused.

At work one day, one of the people in charge of developing some new courses came up to me and asked if I would be willing to help out with the recordings for one of the courses they were working on. I agreed. A few days later, we went back into the recording room and they gave me the script. It was only then I learned the situation: I was a 10 year old child talking to her mother. Didn't know that I sounded that young!

Speaking of sounding young over the phone, another day at work someone called in with questions about the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy. I helped answer the man's questions and offered to send him email with more detailed information. The man said, "That would be great, ma'am. . . . Oh sorry. You don't sound old enough to be a 'ma'am.'"

On my mission, my companion and I were doing some tracting in a neighborhood in Pembroke Pines, Florida--my first area. We got to one door and it was my turn to do the door approach. I knocked and a middle-aged man opened the door. I began my explanation about how we were missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that we were sharing an important message about how the fullness of Christ's gospel had been restored to the earth. I was halfway through my sentence when the man interrupted me: "How old are you, anyways?" I told him that I was 21. He then told me that he had been thinking how I was awfully smart for someone who looked so young. I wonder how young he thought I was . . . .

In my last area in the mission, my companion and I were out in a neighborhood talking to people. We saw this family in a car with a flat tire. Another man was helping them fix it. I walked up and started talking to them. The man accepted a pass-along card but then said, "How old are you. . . 10?" He thought my junior companion, who was actually one year younger than I, was in her twenties.

When I first went in to see my orthodontist this past fall to get my braces on, the assistant asked me where my parents were. I told her that one of them lived in Hawaii and the other lived here in Provo, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the answer she was looking for.

Another time when I went to the orthodontist, there was a new assistant. She sat me down on the chair and began making small talk. "So how is school going for you?" "I'm done." "Oh, so are you planning to go to college now?" "I'm actually done with that too." Then she went silent. Guess I killed that conversation. But I didn't mean to! :(

In October of 2009 I went up to Kaysville to attend a farewell for my former seminary teacher and her husband who was my bishop in Hawaii--they were going on a mission to China. After the meeting I was standing there mingling with the other people who had come. A sweet lady came up and asked me if I was part of the group of people who had come to the farewell. I said, yes. She then asked me who my parents were and where they were. I explained that my parents lived in Utah and Hawaii and no, they were not there with me. She asked how I had gotten there all the way from Provo. I said that I had driven. The lady gave me a confused, blank stare. I could tell that she didn't think I was old enough to drive or live away from my parents.

Spring 2010 I went hiking with my roommates Angela and Ann in Provo Canyon. On the way back down the trail I was walking quite a bit ahead of them. I passed a family walking down the trail as well. I said hello to them and the dad looked over at me and asked if I was from the 5th grade camp up the trail. I am pretty sure he thought I was one of the 5th graders and not one of the camp directors.

After my August 2010 graduation from BYU, I began the fall semester not as a student anymore but as a full-time employee. At one our first FHE's in my single's ward FHE group, we did introductions. My roommate Susan introduced me and mentioned that i had just graduated from BYU in English. One of the guys in our group looked at me in extreme disbelief and asked how old I was. I told him I was 23 and asked everyone how old they thought I was. Someone kindly said 18; someone else said 14. The guy who asked me in the first place how old I was still was not convinced. He asked me "Are you really 23?"