Coming to China, at least in my mind, was supposed to be my one way rocket to adulthood; a swift Jackie Chan chop between me and my "past life" of childhood and collegiate life. Farewell smashmouth, pokemon cards, and fun dip! See ya never sleeping in till 12, forty bowling, and hanger bangers! I stepped onto the airplane feeling ALL GROWED UP!
Until a fateful conversation with a flight attendant about 20 minutes later:
Scene: Outside a bathroom, grown up WOMAN awaits her turn in line, patient and sophisticated, just like a real woman would. MAN flight attendant, mid-forties, approaches with cart of drinks.
MAN: Hi there! Excuse me, just moving through to the next row.
WOMAN: Oh sure (moves to make way for cart).
MAN: Saaay, how old are you?
WOMAN: Twenty-two.
MAN: No! You can't be! You don't look a day past fourteen.
WOMAN: Oh.... noooooo.
WOMAN instantly is reduced to a petulant child, regressing dangerously towards fetushood with every passing second. She is tempted to either go into a ferocious diatribe in which the offending flight attendant would rue the day he was born or throw a wailing temper tantrum. Instead, she responds with a withering giggle.
Yeaaaa. But how would you like to be mistaken for fourteen at TWENTY TWO! That's an eight year difference! Maybe at eighty that would be charming but not now!! Come on! Even as a child I didn't like being thought of as cute. I was a vicious beast! WHY must my ice-cold heart frozen forever by the wolfish winds of worldly woe be housed in face of a newborn bunny?
"Okay, that's cool, minor setback, but I can recover," or so I thought. For my first day of work, I was determined to be all grown up for REAL this time, no more messing around. So I put on my big girl clothes. I was wearing make-up, shoes with buckles, and a CARDIGAN. I was throwing all my chips in this round, it wasn't even enough for twenty-two anymore, I wanted to look ready for RETIREMENT. Bring it world! Even BUNNIES grow up someday!!!! (Sorry, this post is getting really out of hand).
I get to the center, and I'm doing great! I shake hands like a grown-up and use mature words like "Hello" and "Yes, thank you." I get assigned my desk, sit down, start arranging my papers (like a grown up), when all the sudden one of the Chinese teachers comes over. She looks very friendly, and I think to myself, "Ah, pip pip cheerio! A fellow colleague to converse with." She takes my hand like someone would do to a young child, perhaps one of say, fourteen, and she tells me.... "Hello, the other Chinese teachers and I, we all see you this morning and we think oh! she is so cute! you look so young, you are... adorable!"
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Game over. Pull up your permanent seat at the kids table, Sands. A tragic Peter Pan, doomed to eternal imprisonment in Never Never Land. Might as well sew your ID to your forehead or grow a beard cause no bartender is ever gonna believe you're twenty-one. Of course there are benefits, as late as 16 I could still get a children's movie ticket (under 12) and I stopped out of shame not because I looked any older. Sigh.
Then a interesting occurence happened. My roommates (sans Chris) and I went paintballing with friends from work. First of all it was hilarious, the place required us to use their camo regalia complete with a face masks and SWAT jackets. The guys we were with could pull it off, but us smaller people looked like Ralphie's little brother from "A Christmas Story."
To make a long story short, I essentially discovered that I may not be able to get people to respect me as an adult, but I can make them fear me. A whole new, slightly terrifying side of myself emerged. While Meredith was experimenting with bolder techniques such as screaming "ZIG ZAG PATTERN" while she kamikazeed through the course, I was a stealth demon, sitting pretty in a tent picking off people one by one, like a sadistic "Blueberries for Sal." Maybe it was hours of watching my friends play halo and goldeneye growing up, but I didn't even blink. The paintball gun was to me what the brush was to Michelangelo. I was KATNISS!! (hunger games reference, this is not helping my anti-fourteen campaign).
Anyways, I sniped Kevin in the foot and had no mercy on Meredith. She screamed like a plucked turkey every time I shot her but my taste for paint could not be satiated! To make matters worse, every time I hit her I was seized by a fit of giggles which was not only speaks poorly of my capacity for human empathy, but also gave away my hiding spot several times. She eventually repaid my cruelty in a final, brutal duel, but not before I had already ventured irrevocably into the wilderness of my inner assassin. It is a disturbing feeling to go to bed worrying that you might have nightmares about yourself.
Anyways! Bringing out my paintballing alter-ego was empowering in a way. I may be cute, but I can paintball with the most merciless of fiends. In the words of Miley, maybe I have "the best of both worlds." Someday, hopefully, I will look my age. And if not, by that time I will be so feared in the international paintball circuits that it won't even matter.
Toodles!
PS if you still want to be friends after that post, you might want to join our online "read a BOOK" book club. We're reading Sons & Lovers by DH Lawrence, and I promise, I will be much more civilized in those discussions.
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