Youth

I met one of the owners of the company that I work for the other day. Actually, we had met before, but he didn't remember. He asked me if I was new and I told him that I'd worked there for over three years. He looked at me and said, "You don't look old enough to have worked here that long."

I realized that I thought that was pretty nice. At thirty-one that was a compliment. However, I remember when I didn't think comments like that were nice. I used to get very frustrated with people because they were always guessing that I was much younger than I was. In particular, I remember I went to Greenfield Village with my parents my freshman year of college. On that trip (in less than forty-eight hours), I was guessed to be twelve years old or younger on three separate occasions. That's just not what you want to hear when you're starting your college life.

My sister and I faced this all the time and I don't know why. Is there something about a Korean face that looks younger than a Caucasian face of the same age? Do other Korean's face this issue?

However, on the flip side, when my sister and I would go out...people would come up to me and say "Is she your daughter?" Ugh. Because we were the only Korean faces in the crowd, we had to be related and they wanted to put a "logical" structure to our relationship. I really don't understand it. What I could never understand is how one person could ask me if my sister was my daughter and a person the next day ask me if I wanted a kid's menu.