I voted 12 for being mistaken for 18. But in terms of the 21-year-old question: I was on a plane returning from a trip to Europe (I was 21 myself at the time.) The girl next to me and I started chatting. She was from South Africa, traveling to the US by herself, and had a breadth of worldly knowledge and a strong sense of independence that was unusual for people even ten years older than me. We were chatting for about a good two hours before something she said (a reference to school, I believe) made me continue down a line of questioning like “what’s your major or what are you studying” which then led to the revelation that she didn’t have one, as she was 15 years old. Holy crap was I wrong on that one. When we landed, she (unprompted) gave me her phone number and, of course, I didn’t call.
If I had not stumbled into that line of questioning, I would never in a million years have guessed she was that young. I suppose better to figure that out on a plane than having met up for drinks after we landed. Neither her personality, intelligence, maturity, nor looks betrayed her real age. I would have pegged her at 21-25.
Wow. Diogenes might even be able to teach Fred Phelps, Jenny McCarthy, and the Birthers a thing or two about the “LA LA LA LA! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” defense.
I looked older than my years. Unfortunately it’s still happening.
When I was around 13 I looked old enough to not be carded when all my friends were carded. I definitely wasn’t gorgeous, I just had an adult’s body shape. I may have seemed older too because I lived with chronic depression and anxiety so I didn’t act silly or obnoxious, just mostly quiet.
I do remember I had a crush on a man in his twenties, one of my best friend’s brothers. He thought I was around his age so we hit it off until he found out I was 15. Then he started going on and on about jailbait and started avoiding me.
My college roommate would fit into this category. We met when we were both 18, she looked mid-20’s. She would casually enter bars or liquor stores and buy alcohol and was never carded. I’m not sure what it is or was about her that made her look older, it was a combination of face and body.
We met at the dorms. No one believed she was a freshman coming right out of high school, but she was and she was younger than most of the freshman. She had just turned 18 a week or so previous to starting college.
She married right after graduation and is now divorced. She looks like a 40 year old and is trying to re-live her 20’s.
When I was 12, I got the opportunity to audit a literature class at a local community college. Similar to olives, I didn’t try to dress older than I was. I typically wore hoodies and jeans, and I had short hair that I never bothered styling, and certainly no makeup. I also had one of those vinyl school jackets with your graduation year printed on the side (in my case, '95).
One day as class was letting out, one of the other students came over and struck up a conversation about my school and how he had gone there too, and then said, “So, '85, huh? I wonder if we knew some of the same people.” I flattened out the fabric so he could see the whole number and said, “Actually, that’s a '95, I’m still in junior high,” and oh my god, the color drained out of his face so fast. He made a quick goodbye and almost ran out of the room. So I figure his next move was probably going to be to suggest we go out and get coffee or something, I don’t know. Regardless, he certainly thought that I was 10 years older than I actually was.
I’m not even going to address Dio’s nonsense in this thread, except to say that he’s wrong. Just imagine him saying “No I’m not” and me saying “Yes you are” for the next five pages of this thread, and we’ll all save some time that way.
I had been drinking in a bar, run by this older lady named Charlotte, for around 6 years when I decided to have a little fun with her. I went in for my usual beer and shot of Sam Thompson and asked her to card me. She sort of grumbled “what the Hell” and went along with it so I handed over my license. She started to hand it back and then froze, looked at it again, did the math and said “What the Hell? This is your 21st birthday??? Are you fucking kidding me???” She then promptly banned me for three months. And stayed royally pissed about it for another three months or so.
From the time I started going there I had a full beard, rode a big Harley, had lots of friends among the regulars. I never did High School type activities or talked about them and I had a job as a mechanic and usually wore a certain amount of grease - in other words there were no clear clues that I was anything other than an adult and she had taken the evidence at face value. Or judging books by their covers so to speak.
You’re good. That first one, no WAY would I have come anywhere near to the right answer. I mean, there was a huge clue in that she’s standing in what looks like a high school music room, but even so, I was like, she’s trying to throw us off, she was the music teacher there or something.
This reminds of something that happened in the opposite direction. My SO was around 25 at the time and went into a gas station to buy cigarettes. The cashier refused to sell them to him because he said his ID had to be fake and there was no way he was over 16.
You hold to that, despite what DSeid and I (two physicians who have worked with precocious puberty patients) have stated then? That some 11 year olds can ‘pass’ for 18 based on their appearance?
I understand what you are trying to say, but if you don’t personally care that you’re perceived as older and it’s only a ‘‘woman thing,’’ I don’t understand why you’re trying to say it, unless you’re specifically trying to make me feel that I should care about looking so much older than I am.
You are not the first person who has remarked that I look older in photographs (as an adult), but you are only the second. It might bother me a little more if I got it all the time or something, but you are literally the second person to ever point this out to me, and the other person was in the snark pit several years ago. Two people I’ve never met think I look older than the average 27 year old. I might as well join a convent.
Second of all, I am not a person who cares about being attractive and having sex all that much. I realize that is incomprehensible to many Dopers, but there it is. I mean, I care about it in the sense that it feels nice, but I have been in a committed relationship since the age of 19, and am married to a man who finds me sexy at the most outrageously unsexy times. I am not worried about hooking up, finding a mate, or making a best-selling porno. I am worried about finishing graduate school, adopting children, changing social policy, and maybe writing the great American novel.
I fully recognize that it might be a significant issue in the life of someone else. It’s just not a significant issue in my life. We live in a society that definitely tries to force the notion of sexual desirability as the pinnacle of achievement and happiness, but I call bullshit on that notion.
MeanOldLady: I try to keep up to date on what the hip folks do. I consider myself something of an anthropologist in that regard. Cool people like beer, right? Next time I’m in your geographical region we’ll go to your nearest Local Establishment that Serves Alcohol and I’ll buy you a beer.
When I was 16, I was tall for my age, and could get served in almost any bar. Admittedly, back then, things were a little more relaxed, but the drinking age was still 19, and it was still illegal to serve a minor. How could I get away with it? By not acting like an idiot and drawing attention to myself like a typical 16 year-old would.
One of the most interesting part-time jobs I held while in university was working in a store that sold beer. It’s amazing how much older a lot of teen-aged girls can make themselves look with just a little makeup. I would often card them to be on the safe side. I can’t swear as to their ages, but there were a lot of them, and they all looked older than they were.
I also don’t believe they could pass for 18 for very long. I have stated all along that I am putting speech and behavior into the equation, not just superficial, still-photo, imagery.
But why not? If they can pass for eighteen, why not twenty-one? For a lot of people there isn’t a huge difference between those ages, as has been demonstrated.
Besides, I think we are only talking about looks. Yes, people do destroy illusions when they speak but this is just a visual thing.
Nope. **Dio ***knows *that it can’t be so, so any of your evidence must be faulty. Eleven year olds can’t look like 18 year olds (or 21 year olds) because they don’t. Q.E.D.
At this point I’m pretty willing to believe that you’d guess most of the 19-23 yr olds at the college here as 11-14, if you’re judging by conversation and behavior as well as looks, and as inclined to err young as your statements in this and the companion thread would indicate. “Oh Em GEEE, Edward is SO CUTE!” or whatever the latest thing after Twilight is. When I was still in college it was Harry Potter Club, or Pokemon–at times it seemed like a solid 30-40% of college kids both guys and girls were into Pokemon.
I mean, assuming you don’t ignore/dismiss me because I’m contradicting your assertion again:
Any advice yet for us non-superhumans, y’know, the super-majority of the thread who apparently lack your amazing never-wrong age-guessing powers?
Well I wouldn’t know the first thing about what the cool kids do, but I would like an alcoholic beverage from the nearest Drinking Establishment, so I’d say you did good!
Then you haven’t talked to any teenagers in a long time. Is it common for a teen to speak like an adult? Not really, but if you’ve never met a teenager that can at least fake it for a short conversation, you haven’t spoken to anyone under 18 in a… well ever.