My co-workers think I’m 12, I’m sure of it. Last week, Monica was talking about how she applies so much of what she’s learned from being a mother into the real world.

I thought about this. “I’m a mom, too, but I just barely bumble through it,” I laughed, resorting to self-deprecation as always.

“Oh honey,” our supervisor Evelyn started, spinning around in her seat.

“You’re so young! It’ll come to you eventually.”

I smiled tautly, thinking to myself, “I’m THIRTY, not some teen mom on MTV. How the fuck old does she think I am?

Then last night, another co-worker walked by and tapped my headphones. I slipped them off and she said, “I love your headphones! I can’t wear those things that go in your ears.

”

“Oh me either,” I emphatically agreed, feeling an instant bond. “They make me feel like I’m in a submarine.” I went on to tell her the selling points of my Skullcandy headphones and where she could get a pair herself.

“That’s awesome,” she said. “It’s so hard to find headphones anymore! I just want a small pair, like the ones that used to come with —” she paused. “Well, you’re too young to remember Walkmans!

”

WHAT THE FUCK? I had at least fifteen Walkmans throughout the course of my adolescence.

And before I left that night, Evelyn stopped to admire my necklace. “You always wear the cutest things. You’re just the cutest little girl.”

I’m not computing. I have gray hairs, check it! I’m clearly not seeing the same person they are, because when I look in the mirror, I see a tired lady.

**************

Tonight after work, I walked through the parking lot with my co-worker Charlene. We started talking about our supervisor and how she’s such a pleasure to work for.

“I like her because she doesn’t feel the need to sit there all night and talk to us,” Charlene said.

I nodded in agreement, although I’m too busy listening to sports radio all night to really notice. (Seriously, when did I become a middle aged man.)

“There are these two girls who sit on the other side of me. They’ve been staying until 6:30 lately and I can’t stand listening to them talk. All they do is talk about the people there that they don’t like, and how this one girl never wears the right pants but today she did. And then they called some guy an asshole.” Charlene scoffed, shook her head.

I took this opportunity to add my own gripes, though I have very few. “Oh, and what about that guy that coughs so bad every day, it sounds like he’s going to puke?” I gave a short, disgusted laugh. Seriously, some times I expect to stand up to see his ghost circling above his head.

She stopped walking and looked at me. I was waiting for her to be all, “Oh, I know right? Like, go in the bathroom if you’re gonna cough up a lung!”

Instead, it was, “Oh, he has a disease.”

AWKWARD.

We had approached her car by this time, so I got to nervously mumble, “Have a great weekend” and shuffle over to my own car with my head down.