Do I really look that young?

I know I'm way behind my schedule but there were some things that needed to be sorted out first otherwise they would have kept disturbing my mental peace. Plus, I'm also feeling a little awkward to write a post after over a month, I don't know from where to start. But my drafts came to the rescue. 

I look younger than I actually am. And I believe it is because I'm underweight which lends me 'growing' looks as opposed to a 'grown-up.

Once I went to an office which is a sister concern of our office so we don't need to show our identity to enter the premises. So, I was moving at a pace as usual, when I was interrupted by a security official. Without giving it much thought upon seeing my free-to-enter attitude, he shot a question at me, "Kid, is your mother an employee here or your father?" His confidence made me let out a smile. How sure he was that he was giving me both the possible options which could have been. With equal confidence, I reverted, "I'm."

"Oh! So you yourself are the employee," he needed to repeat it to get the reality sink in.

Similarly, whenever we walk our way off, we can find auto-wallas shouting for the possible venues where the passenger could be heading. Coincidentally or deliberately, 95% of the times I would hear the names of popular colleges of the city being called out to me. Perhaps, they believed me to be collegiate. It can be either for my looks or because of the majority of the crowd heading to those places. 

This college-look incident has happened to me multiple times. On two of the occasions has it happened that the person sitting next to me in the bus said, "Are you from so-and-so college?" On my denial, they would say, "You look like someone who belongs to that college." 

(Mind you, both people took the name of the same college, though there must be a gap of months between both the incidents).

Only the stranger conductor of the bus was left to complete this ritual, so even he didn't step back the other time saying, "Girl, are you going to get down at the university?"

One evening, I was in the park with my nephew. One uncle of grandfatherly age asked me, "So, what do you do?" On getting my reply he was a bit taken aback. "You're working. No. You look like a 16-year-old." Upon crossing our paths again after 1-2 rounds of the park, he still was surprised and I faintly remember he still had some comment which I can't recount exactly. 

From this word grandfather, my mind wandered back to the time when I was with my dad headed to the market on foot. That was way back in 2008 or 2009 maybe. Two of my classmates had seen me going with him. Next day, in the school I was asked, "Was he your maternal grandfather or paternal?

Leave alone outsiders, even the people at my workplace find me little. Once they were talking about conducting a play on republic day. Amidst the planning, one of them said, "She'll comfortably fit in the part of school student, she carries such looks." Even the chief of our organisation, in our meeting, remarked, "You look so young, in which year did you join?"

That was all about my looks. One of the people made me perplexed about my voice also. One day over a call, I had asked that person to complete some of the formalities by providing some documents. When he came in person to hand over the said documents, his entry line was, "Who was the girl who had called me?" (This line didn't come out the way in which it was actually said. Duh! Much is lost in translation.)

If at all, any of you found this post to be a way of complaining, please don't. There are a lot of benefits too of being/looking young. For instance, if I did something in a wrong way, I can take the benefit by saying, "I don't know I'm too small for all this." 

As once I went to someone's home to mark attendance as he was operated upon recently. But I forgot that you're not supposed to go empty-handed. So, I had an excuse. "I've never done such things earlier. Mom and Dad did it all." 

But I guess life is too cruel for even elders to take on. The other time, I was planning to pay homage to a colleague whose father had passed on recently. I discussed it with another ma'am at the office who agreed to accompany me but even she was reluctant to take the lead but we managed. 

PS People who have not seen me ever, please don't picturise me as an infant with a nipple in her mouth.