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.