You Know You're Getting Old

You know you're getting old(er) when others' reactions to you start changing in strange ways: today I was at a grocery store looking for rice roll wrappers, when I spotted a young man wearing a shirt with a name badge dangling off the pocket. "Excuse me," I said, "Do you know where - "
"I DON'T WORK HERE!" he practically screamed in my face, glaring at me as he edged away from me. He seemed insulted that I was suggesting he worked in the grocery store. Upon closer inspection I saw that his name badge was from some auto parts store.
"Well, SORRY," I said, "But you're wearing that BADGE." I said BADGE in the same tone I would say TURD, like, "You're wearing a TURD."

So I made a mistake and someone yelled at me; no big deal, right? People ask me ALL THE TIME in stores if I work there. It's usually in department stores or Crate and Barrel that this happens. I don't know why that is. I think I just have Retail Face, or else I'm hustling around the store with so much purpose that it seems I work there and I'm actually working intstead of just bargain-hunting. I don't get upset, I usually just tell them I don't work there, but then I offer advice anyway as if I did work there.

The thing that upset me so is that a few years ago, even two years ago, a young, presumably heterosexual Asian American boy like Mr. Auto Parts would have HAPPILY pointed me to the rice wrappers, possibly even walked me there, while explaining regretfully that he did not work at the grocery store but maybe we could hang out sometime. Two years ago I had long hair and wore open-toed high heeled shoes every day, which I don't now, because I work at a vegetable warehouse, and because, well, it's San Francisco, it's winter, and my feet are cold and need socks. It's just a fact. I've lived here for four years and only in the past two years have I accepted and admitted that my feet need socks and shoes in the winter here. I froze my feet for a full two winters here. When I lived in Southern California, I barely even owned socks. Maybe a few pairs of running socks - that was it. Other than my shoes and my hair, which is now shorter but I think actually cuter, I think I look the same as I did before I was thirty. But I think youngsters can just SENSE that I'm over thirty, and that's why he treated me like I was an eighty-five year old wild woman who had just dropped her dentures on his shoe and grabbed his balls.

To make matters worse, when I discovered that the store didn't even carry the rice wrappers, the young man (who did really work there) who explained that to me said, "Sorry, ma'am." He called me ma'am! Dear Daniel is a full four years younger than I am. I'm an older woman. I'm an old woman. It's so unfair.