aqua fortis

Thursday, November 18, 2004

Three Times and Counting

Today I experienced for the third time the irritation (and benefit) of somebody thinking I look a lot younger than I actually am. Yet again, this was an incident in which I answered the front doorbell and a door-to-door salesman asked, "is your mom or dad home?" I always have a really strong compulsion to inform them that a) I am in fact the homeowner here, and b) I have no clue whether my mom or dad are home since I have not lived with my parents since 1997 (since 1993 if you count college, when I lived away from home 8 months of the year).

But, common sense won out again, and I said, "No, they're not here, sorry" (not exactly a lie), and the guy just told me to tell them that So-and-So stopped by selling Some-Product-or-Other. I have to say, if people are going to persist in irritating me by thinking I'm some 10+ years younger, then I'm sure as hell going to take advantage of it. You just lost a potential sale, buddy.

1 comments:

Sarah Stevenson said...

It's not so much the getting carded that I mind--that's perfectly fine! :) It's the automatic assumption that there's no way I can possibly be overage and therefore I don't even get *asked* whether I'm the lady of the house. I'm not sure whether to be offended or amused.

My mother-in-law had similar problems. She says that wen she had Rob and his younger sister with her, as small children, people would routinely mistake her for the older sister or the babysitter. I can't wait... ;P