Well, At Least She Didn't Call Me Elderly

I am obviously in a weird place in my life.

I have finally stopped flinching (but still pretend I can't hear them if someone is calling me from afar or behind me) at "ma'am."

I don't even bother with joking/getting excited about the "carding" thing. They want to see my ID because they probably just got cited and everyone in an over 21 establishment needs to be carrying some sort of ID, get over it lady, they do not think you are too young, no matter what story the waitress pulls.

Today though, a double-whammy:

Today I found out that the fellow I'm assisting is younger than me, by a wide enough margin that when he talks to me in Spanish he will use the "Ud." form. (It's a, um, case/style of speaking that is used to speak to say an older person, your boss, your parents/grandparents, people you don't know well/are only acquainted with. In English it would be the thee/the thing of olde.)

I can honestly say I had not noticed it until today when he made the mistake of using "vas" (the tu/informal instead of "va") and then quickly apologized because in the country he comes from, they don't really use the "Ud." form and that's when it came out that he'd been using the more formal speech with me cuz he knew that it was mostly a Mexican/Spanish thing and he was so very sorry and he does really respect his elders (oh yes he did); I felt so very old and I could have cried...I think the look on my face said it all as he kinda just went quiet and then said he was going to go help the other assistant, or something...(I'm six years older, BTW, I guess in young' un years that may as well be 50.)

Well, after that I felt no guilt whatsoever leaving work early enough to hit el banco.

I need a new bank. Not so much the global conglomerate that is rhymes-with-bells-cargo, but the physical branch that is closest to my house. I swear to all that is green and makes rich people go, no one in that branch is over 25. Also, maybe that branch attracts one too many "winners." They have that plate-glass thing that banks that were held up one too many times in the early 90s were required to put in, so instead of having a private conversation with your teller, your business gets blasted across the room because somehow the tellers think you can't hear them, and, like the woman in front of me, the patrons scream what they need at full volume. Very disconcerting.

The opposite of this is that the tellers think that you can't hear their private conversations. So I got to hear the teller to the right of mine wale about his inability to stay up yet another minute. And my teller explaining as she got my money, that the lovely coffee shop across the way only sold espresso and he would be far too wired for all of them if he did that.

I smiled and remarked about the propensity of PNWers and their addiction to the magical bean. Shocked I could hear her, she agreed and said, "It's even worse when people my age stay up all night partying and think they can work a full shift the next day." We both looked over at the teller at that point and he was all, "Why you lookin' at me!"

"We'll grow out of that, though, right?" She said smiling handing me my cash. (Did I mention she was about 22? With too much eye make-up and product in her hair?)

Until that point in time I had no idea that "smiling with only your mouth" was something that happened in real life, because people, I felt myself doing it. But the moment passed and I took my money. I'd asked for an odd assortment of bill values and I actually apologized for the weirdness of it, but she said, "Oh, this is nothing. The elderly ladies that come in usually have a very specific list of how much of what they want to have and are very insistent about it."

Ahem, how nice. At least, in her eyes, I'm still not a part of that category, yet. Except, yeah, it's 6 PM and I am so going to bed cuz I am no bank-tellering-all-night-partier. Instead I am one-day-closer-to-middle-age and it's not going to be pretty...besides, I think I've caught the latest "field-office-virus" from my wonderful co-workers...

(SIGH.)