The big moment has arrived. It’s midnight on your twenty-first birthday, and you’re about to enter a bar or order a drink (legally) for the first time. You feel so proud. You hand your ID over to the bouncer/bartender/waiter and wait patiently for them to glance at it quickly and let you go on your merry way, like they did for everyone else.
Instead, they stare at it for a while, looking confused, and move it really close to their face. They squint at it. Then only after at least 45 seconds of this, do they look up at you and say:
“You’re turning 21 tonight?! You look like you’re barely 18!”
If you have a baby face or a face that makes you look at least four years younger than you actually are, you’ve probably had to go through some form of this scenario countless times. It all started with your twenty-first birthday when people actually start bothering to look at your age on your license.
Maybe you never realized you had a baby face before. Maybe you lived in blissful ignorance for a while because you weren’t able to order drinks anyway, so it didn’t matter. But now, you’ve learned to have your license ready and out whenever you even think about ordering a drink.
"Have people just been assuming I’m like 16 years old this whole time, and I never realized it?" you ask yourself. Speaking from experience, yes, probably.
The night I turned 21, I celebrated in New York City because, you know, you only turn 21 once. I ordered maybe four or five drinks that night. The first legal drink I ever had was a marg (I know, basic) and the waiter didn’t even ask to see ID when I ordered it.
"Wow," I thought to myself. "They must be able to read my new maturity on my face. Or maybe New Yorkers are just way more lax about drinking laws."
It was most definitely the latter because at the next bar we went to the bouncer asked to see my ID twice. It was a rooftop bar, and you had to ride the elevator to get there. The bouncer just stayed in the elevator the whole time and took people’s IDs as we rode up. He checked mine as we first got in the elevator, and I thought everything was hunky-dory, but then, after we were at least halfway up the building, he says:
“Hey hon, I gotta see that ID again.” I gave it to him, getting very nervous. He reminded me of Vin Diesel, but more intimidating. He handed it back to me and said, “Sorry, doll – you just got such a baby face goin’ on!”
Word-for-word he said that. It was a very New York-type sentence, and I would have felt amused if the elevator people hadn’t all laughed, but they did, so instead, I wanted to die.
The night progressed like that, though no other bouncers called me “doll.” They all just stared at my ID like it showed me with green skin. I learned that night what I had denied since I graduated high school; I’ve looked 18 for at least the past five years.
So, if you’re like me and look like you’ve been frozen in time as an eternal teenager at least know you’re not alone. There are others out there like you who will also have a hard time convincing anyone that they’re actually legally allowed to drink a beer. Don’t let it get in the way of having twenty-first, twenty-second, or whatever birthday. Just laugh when people bring it up and say, “Yea, I actually am an adult! And now I really need that drink.”
