Ageism?

People can never guess my age. When I was 17, everyone thought I was 13. When I was 21, everyone thought I was 18. And now that I’m 23, I still get confused for a 20 year old, but I don’t get offended anymore. I’m told that when I’m 40, and everyone thinks I’m 30, I’ll even appreciate it. We’ll see.

I found a place to live. I live with four incredible girls in a quiet neighborhood about 15 minutes outside of downtown. We share a 5 bedroom house, 2 dogs, and a cat. We’ve got a lot going on. Everyone has their own transportation, and everyone (except me) has at least 2-3 jobs. When I first moved in, I asked my new roomies about our neighbors, and they all said that there’s been a good relationship with most, but that all changed this weekend.

Saturday, my car spent the day parked in front of our neighbor’s house, opposite the flow of traffic. We walk out to my car that night to a note that says “DID YOU GO TO DRIVING SCHOOL? TELL N* I’VE HAD IT!” Ok, in my opinion, that seems a little intense for the situation…especially because he’s never mentioned it to her before. I moved my car, and the next day wrote an apologetic letter introducing myself, including my phone number, and asking to make sure that this “incident” doesn’t affect the way he views our landlord/roommate, or our house in general. Nice try, Cathy.

Yesterday, the kid of our neighbor drops a note in our mailbox. He told N* he’s not happy as a neighbor, and here are some of his concerns:
- having 5 cars parked in front of the house…this is a neighborhood, not a parking lot
- barking dogs
- finding her roommates on Craigslist…we could be anybody, and he fears for the safety of his children
- the condition of the front lawn…we need to turn on our sprinklers
- if she needs roommates to help pay the mortgage, maybe she should’ve thought about that before she bought her house

As if any of the above-mentioned items are any of his business. I think the thing that frustrates me the most is that, instead of walking over himself to talk to the roommates, he passive-aggressively sent his own child to deliver a letter. It’s not fair to be judged based on your age. It’s just like when the sales associate at a store ignores your presence because you look too young to be seriously buying something from their establishment. When people see a house of twenty-something single people, it’s automatically assumed that we’re completely out of control ragers who have no respect for our neighbors; a view that could be completely eliminated with one real conversation. Even in the face of goodwill and kindness, some people will just refuse to be happy.

It very much reminds me of the cinder blocks next to the Minorcas house.