I Got Carded! (Recently)

Yes, it’s true! I got carded exactly two days ago. In a FULLY LIT grocery store, buying a bottle of cheap-ass champagne. Take THAT, Middle Age!

I was picking up a bottle of the cheap stuff because I want to try making this yummy champagne cocktail I had at a New Year’s Eve party, and I figure if I’m mixing it with cranberry juice, there’s no point in spending a lot of money on the good stuff. As if I would know the difference anyway. The recipe is one bottle of champagne, two cups of cranberry juice and a half cup of the orange liquor of your choice. I was looking confused in the cordials section of the liquor store when some guy who worked there recommended this orange liquor that Patron makes. He then went on about how he hates Patron tequila and thinks it’s overpriced, but he likes this stuff. I tasted it when I got home, and it is indeed sweet and orangey, which is exactly what I was looking for.

Anywho, did I mention that I got carded? In full daylight? I DID. The ironic thing is that when I pulled the bottle off the shelf, I remembered the last time I got carded. It was in a very dark bar about 4 years ago. I was thinking nostalgically about how that was probably the last time it would ever happen, short of some serious surgical intervention, and even then, the eyebrows in the center of the forehead and inability to blink are always a dead giveaway.

But no, it turns out that spending 45 minutes on the Nordic Track, sweating off all your eye-liner, and then just toweling off, pulling on your clothes (without bothering to shower) and going to the grocery store with your hair still a little wet is some sort of magical youth elixir.

The checkout clerk looked at me a little sideways and said “Are you over 21?” and then before I could answer she went on to “Can I see your ID please?” And I’m all like “Absolutely you can see my ID!” And I’m thinking, honey, you could cut my lifespan into two equal-sized pieces and each half would still be old enough to buy this bottle of cheap champagne.

So then I’m standing there expectantly, maybe even feeling a little smug, as she inspected my ID, waiting for some sort of recognition for being extremely “over 21” and not looking it. I kept waiting for her to look incredulously back and forth between my license and my face and then go on and on about how I couldn’t possibly be that old and someone should write an article about me for the Style section of the newspaper. But she didn’t. She just handed the ID back to me and went back to scanning canned goods. It was very anti-climactic.

The whole thing left me feeling a little indignant. Because, you know, if you’re going to make every middle-aged woman who comes through your checkout line go to all the trouble of digging out her driver’s license out of her purse, you should at least PRETEND to be surprised when one or two of them turns out to be a little over thirty. She could have thrown me a bone and at least raised her eyebrows. I took my license completely out of my wallet for her convenience and I got nothing.

Whatever. I know she was probably half blind or high or just screwing with me, but I’m still counting it, and I dare anyone to even snicker about it in my general direction.