Originally posted 02 Feb. 2003

There's something comforting about having a "-teen" appended to a number and calling it your age. It's a license to sneak into the playground at McDonald's Katipunan and pilfer a couple of plastic balls from the ball pool. It's an excuse not to get a job, an excuse not to start shopping around for a reputable gynecologist. In short, it's something I hide behind whenever unwanted responsibility comes my way.

And I have less than four months before that all goes away.

All right, so I've never actually pilfered anything from fast food restaurants, unless I count asking for a fork and knife when I've only ordered a soda. So I already have a gynecologist, even if I've only gone to her office once (I've had a couple of zits in the strangest places). And there's no law in this country that actually says people over twenty can't hide from responsibility. But it sure is going to feel that way for me.

Maybe I resent turning twenty because there's nothing to look forward to after turning eighteen. Eighteen is when you're allowed to vote, to get a driver's license without parental consent, and to watch an R-rated movie without breaking the law. In other countries where people can't drink anything alcoholic if they're below 21, they probably think it's cool to turn twenty because that means they're getting closer to being able to get drunk and legal. Here, it doesn't mean a thing. This past year, I've constantly had to remind myself that I was nineteen. I keep forgetting because it doesn't really matter once I've established that I'm past eighteen.

Not that anyone's going to believe I'm twenty, of course. I strongly suspect that I won't look twenty until I'm forty. That's perfectly fine with me, especially since most forty-year-olds tend to be obsessed with looking younger. ("And they say, how cute naman, your daughter. No, I say, she's my granddaughter. And they say, hwhaaat? It never fails; they always give out a scream.") But I'm sure that if I get pregnant before I'm forty, people will click their tongues whenever I pass by and think, "That poor, knocked-up little kid..."