FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH?

Ashley today

Ashley at 17

When you are 37 years old and someone mistakes you to be 26: that's a compliment.

When you are 24 years old and everyone mistakes you to be 17: that's NOT a compliment.

At least 2-3 times a week someone comments about my age or asks me how old I am. They believe I am in high school. They believe I am in junior high (yes, many times that one has happened). They believe I am too young to use a credit card. They believe I need parental signatures when signing up for things. This isn't cute. It just isn't. And I think the worst part of all of it is when I correct people on their poor assumptions they just say, "Well take that as a compliment. When you are 30 you're gonna love it." Well I am not 30. Believing that I am a teenager at this point in my life is not a good feeling. So don't tell me that your judgment of my age is anything but a major put down.

Here are just a few of the thousand+ examples I have of mistaken age identity:

• When I was a sophomore in college I went to visit my dad at his office in Salt Lake. While taking the elevator up to see him one of his partners in the law firm asked me what year I was in school. I told him I was a sophomore. His reply was, "Go Darts!" Ehh, no. That would be Go Cougars! Actual age: 20. Presumed age: 15.
  
  
• During the last semester of my senior year at BYU I interviewed for teaching positions. Some crazy teacher in one of the junior high schools that I went to stopped me in the hallway and asked me what I was doing out in the middle of class. Actual Age: 22 Presumed age: 14.
  
  
• One morning Allison, Cameo, and I went to ask a teacher down the hall a question about his document camera. He wasn't in the room so we just took his out and discussed the pro's and con's about buying them for our department. Well the student teacher walked up and assumed we were all students and told us to, "put that down and do not play with the teacher's equipment." Actual Age: 23. Presumed age: 15.
  
  
• Cameo and I took a group of students to Washington, D.C. The best part of the journey there was the fact that we had exit row seats on the plane. Okay, so that was only fantastic until the flight attendant came to inform us that we couldn't sit there because you had to be over 15 to sit in an exit row. Ashley's actual age: 23, Cameo's actual age: 25. Presumed age: 14.
  
  
• Then yesterday my dad took me to a museum in The Dalles, Oregon. We walked up to the counter and he told the woman at the counter we wanted to see the museum. She said, "okay, just one ticket then?" What? Didn't she see there were two of us? She told us all this week kids under 18 get into the museum for free. I had to do the awkward age correction and inform her that was not case for me. Actual age: 24. Presumed age: 17.