Baby Face

Two things happened to me within the last month which have forced me to accept that I look younger than my twenty years. While I'd always heard from people that I looked maybe a year or two younger than I actually am, that I looked like somebody in senior cycle at secondary school rather than a second year college student, I'd never really paid much heed. I certainly couldn't see it when I looked in the mirror, and besides, people assuming I was in fifth or sixth year instead of senior freshman Law and German was, at best, amusing, and at worst, mildly irksome. Sadly, my living in ignorant bliss about exactly how young some people seem to mistakenly think I am came to a screeching halt thanks to these two recent occurrences, causing me to become hung up on my apparently youthful appearance.

"Let me show you to your table", the young waitress smiled. It was a mid-November Friday evening, and my parents, brother and I had headed out to dine at a nice restaurant in Drogheda. As the four of us sat, the waitress said to my mum, "I'll bring you along menus now. Would you like the kiddies' menu for the children?" and gestured towards me as she uttered the words "kiddies' menu". I was incensed. Dad smirked, Mum was rendered speechless and looked towards me nervously, awaiting my reaction, and my brother Dara, four years my junior, grinned. I was the first to break approximately eight seconds of thundering silence. "I'm twenty", I explained smoothly, as though the waitress were a dense toddler, "so I really don't think that would be appropriate."

"Oh!", came the waitress's surprised reply. "That's so embarrassing, I'm sorry, I'm only twenty-one myself!" With that, she scuttled off, and sent another waitress back with our menus. By now, Dad's shoulders had started to shake with laughter, and I had launched into an amused albeit miffed tirade about how I was sick and tired of people thinking that I am at an age which qualifies me to eat sausage, beans and chips (in this case, ten and under - seriously).

So aghast I was I even went as far as posting a Facebook status about this little incident, something I tend to reserve for very special occasions only. It got fifty-five "likes", and unfortunately I'm not sure if this means that fifty-five people simply found the waitress's faux pas amusing or whether fifty-five people agree with the waitress on me looking like a fourth class pupil. Of course, I've had this happen before, but never before have I had anyone so brazenly mistake me for someone so young. When I was sitting the Leaving Cert, people thought I was sitting the Junior Cert, and when I was sitting the Junior Cert, people tended to think I was still in first year, and so on. That, I could handle. And everybody is going to look juvenile in school uniform, anyway.

It's starting to become a little more embarrassing, though. Or so it did two months ago, anyway. It escalated last week, on the last day of term. I came rushing out my front door, weighed down with a suitcase, a backpack, and my cumbersome laptop and its replacement keyboard, determined to catch the last bus for the next twenty minutes into town. Still running, I stuck out my hand as the bus pulled up to the stop. As I clambered aboard, sweaty and breathless and patting myself down trying to find my ticket, the driver leered and quipped, "are you running away from home, love?!" Having found my ticket, I validated it, chuckled weakly, and proceeded to haul my case into the luggage rack and find a seat. Twenty minutes later as we approached my stop in town, I made my way back to the luggage rack at the front of the bus to tussle with my case.

"Are ya heading home for the weekend, love?" he asked.

"Yeah, I am! Back to Louth!"

"Ah you're from Louth; a wee lass from the the Wee County! Are ya at college here?"

"Yes, yes I am!"

"And where are ya studying?"

"Law and German in Trinity..."

"That's gas, love, Sure don't ya only look about twelve. Ah sure look, you'll make some lucky man very happy someday!"

Why, because I look twelve? I wanted to ask. Instead, I chuckled moronically again, and disembarked wishing him a happy Christmas. I remained dumbfounded for the rest of the afternoon and my mouth hung so far open I'm surprised I didn't catch flies. People had now moved on from simply confusing me with someone who still believes in Santa, to actually going out of their way to point out that I look childish. Fantastic.

And what is it about my appearance that causes people to fall under this misapprehension in the first place? It's not as though I wear my hair in pigtails and carry a lunch box. Okay, I don't wear a pick of make up save special occasions, but would a layer of foundation and some mascara really add five years onto my appearance? Probably not. I'm now perennially plagued with doubt about my appearance thanks to Menugate and that "character" of a bus driver, and my mind is filled with so many questions. If I look twelve now at the age of twenty, how old did people think I looked when I was actually twelve? Four? Is this why bouncers who man the doors of pubs and nightclubs so often ask to see a bank card or health insurance card with my name on it to back up my ID, and not just because they're "strict with everybody" as I had always thought? Will I look thirty-two on my fortieth birthday?

Dad says he suffered with the cursed baby face when he was at college, too. Even though he was often left red faced when he got refused entry to licensed premises for looking like a character from an Enid Blyton novel, he says it stands to him now (it doesn't). I can, however, take solace in the fact that when you Google "having a baby face" you are met by a Yahoo! Answers page where most people say that it means you have soft skin (a plus in my book) and a round face (hmm) and that it's generally a good thing. I'll take that. Even though I don't really believe it.

I Am Not Law Student-Like

Earlier, as I sat in the law library in college mulling over a seminar assignment that was failing to hold both my attention and my interest, I came to a realisation. I have chosen the wrong degree.

I've always kind of suspected law wasn't really up my alley. Law students are expected to be motivated, good problem solvers, diligent, and pay attention to detail. I'm lazy, haphazard, disorganised and careless. While I enjoy the German part of my degree (language and cultural history), my legal modules force me to question my intelligence, my sanity, my ability to care and even my ability to spell - when you read the word "manslaughter" eleven times across two pages, it just starts to look really, really wrong and unwordlike. I don't want to be a barrister or a solicitor. For one thing, I would leave all the necessary preparation until the last minute and then everybody would go to prison or lose custody of their children or whatever, and for another, I don't want to have to work hard at something I absolutely do not enjoy. Call me lazy, but law is difficult and involves having a working knowledge of Latin and makes me want to lie down thinking about it. I know the reality of the future is paying bills and putting food on the table and all this stuff about "following your dreams" and "being true to yourself and your interests" and "doing what you love" doesn't really matter when you're forty and have a mortgage to pay off but come on. I'm sure I'll figure out how to pay for things somehow.

I didn't sign up for a law degree as an aspiring Clarence Darrow only to have my expectations of what it would all entail unfulfilled and my hopes dashed and my dreams crushed. I'm not sure what I was thinking, really. The German aspect appealed to me the most and the university's prospectus was terribly misleading in that it made the German legal systems module sound interesting. My strengths have always been language and expression so I thought a full grounding in law, German law, German history and German language was a pretty decent fit. I suppose I also had romanticised notions of arguing passionately in favour of this, that and the other and speaking out fervently against X, Y and Z but you do very little arguing of your own in a law degree really. You just need to learn about what about other people argued and then argue for or against their arguments. There are very few morals involved; it's all a giant storm in a teacup over minute details and technicalities.

As I sat in the law library this evening, six things came to my attention that hammered home the reality of the situation - that I am not cut out for the hard graft and effort required for a Trinity law degree. As my peers hunched over desks around me, diligently poring over fat legal textbooks and online legal databases, I sat chewing a pen I got for free in Supermacs and wondered whether I could get away with faking tonsillitis if I simply refused to speak for a few days and consequently would not have to attend my land law seminar. For starters, everybody else was typing away on neat little netbooks or MacBooks or iPads, while I lugged out my worse-for-the-wear, dinted and crumb-covered 17" laptop complete with plug-in USB keyboard because I spilled tea all over the original one back in February and it no longer works. Secondly, I had no notepaper with me, never mind the fancy yellow legal notepaper, because the bag in which my notepad fits didn't go with my outfit this morning so I chose to take a smaller one to college with me instead and leave my notepad behind. Thirdly, I was not neatly dressed and wearing trendy high-heeled ankle boots. This is foreshadowing; I will never be able to wear a trouser suit and look elegant and not spill something all down the front of it. Fourthly, I had to look the most basic of terminology up in an online legal dictionary and the most basic of legal concepts up on Wikipedia. Granted, land law is a difficult twat of a subject but that's no excuse for not knowing what "conveyance" meant. Fifth of all, I hadn't set foot in the library since May, despite it being November and the seventh week of lectures, and didn't know the "showing your student ID to the security guard who grunts or nods in acceptance" system of entering the library had been replaced by one involving swiping your card against an electronic reader thus I rammed into the very solid barrier and made myself look like a right cretin. Finally, my laptop's screensaver is a photo of Alicia Florrick from "The Good Wife" with my face poorly photoshopped onto her shoulders, which was a going away gift from my pal Maria. It's supposed to be ironic because she's wearing a trouser suit and I was going to Germany to work in an office and despise trouser suits, as hinted at above. I'm also drunk in the photo and have lipstick on my face. Juxtaposition at its very best.

I keep waiting for the day I will have an epiphany or a "Eureka!" moment and discover a legal module or aspect of a legal module that will make me love law and want to sit down and read cases and legislation and actually enjoy it or maybe even just tolerate it, but this possibility becomes more and more remote with each passing lecture and mind-numbingly tedious legal concept. At least I have German, I console myself. At least I have German.