Note to self

Recently I've come to the realization that age, like most things in life, is subjective.

When you're 10, 19 sounds old. Not old old like your great-grandparents, but still at least half a million years away. Those nine years sound like a life-time, then next thing you know you're 40, & those 19-year-olds look like babys to you.

I've been thinking about age a lot this week. Mostly because no one in Douglas believes that I'm 18.

When I started working at B & N (only 16 years old at the time) people would some times ask how old I was. Usually guys in their late 20s or 30s, usually when I was working by myself. Instead of telling them right away, I'd make them guess first, it was kind of a game, & I kept a tally of the answers in my head. The average guess was around 18-20, legal, but certainly not old enough to drink. (Little did they know, 17 is actually the legal age of consent in Illinois. Please do not ask how I know this.) These guys were always a little flirtatious, so I quickly chalked it up to wishful-thinking, after-all, I'd played this same game with high-school boys & they always thought I was 14. (Which I found extremely insulting at the mature, enlightened age of 16.)

But now it's the complete opposite. I don't know if it's because of where I am, or the fact that I'm one of the three white teen aged girls in Douglas, or if my face has suddenly de-aged almost two years, but no one believes that I'm going to be 19 in three short months. Maybe it's because I'm not pushing a stroller or sporting a baby-bulge. Just from looking around the grocery store I'd guess that half the female population under the age of 18 either has a kid, or is going to with in the next few months.

That was actually one of the first things I was told when I got to Douglas, teen aged pregnancies are pretty much normal here. It's like an epidemic...