A Kid?

Today at the food bank, I was working with some new (to me) people. This is only my second Friday, and I plan to make it a regular thing. Fridays are pretty different from Mondays, mostly because we don't have two days of produce deliveries to give away on Fridays - on Mondays, we have Sunday and Monday deliveries from Trader Joe's and one from the Alameda Farmer's Market filling our tables.


The volunteer coordinator and a few people were having a discussion about who would work "up front," that is, with the clients and the produce, and I offered to work the tables with this guy whose first day was today. I told him while I was sorting through the boxes that the way I was taught to do it was one person would handle the table with the salads and the "refrigerated boxes" (which are just big plastic boxes with blue ice in them, for cheese, yogurt, sandwiches, pizzas, and the like), and the other person would handle the other table (which today was filled with mushrooms, cabbage, sweet potatoes, melons, tomatoes, zucchini, mandarin oranges, and cauliflower). He agreed to this arrangement and said, "You're pretty smart for a kid."


I thought this was a very funny thing for him to say to me, but I didn't remark on it to him. I'm not vain about my age, and what I thought was, "He must think I'm in my twenties." In reality I doubt this man is much older than I actually am; I'd be surprised if he is 50.


Later, I introduced myself to the women who would be signing people in and one of them remarked that she really liked my name. I thanked her and said, "It has become much more common in the last 20 years. It was much less so when I was born, almost forty years ago."


Yep, I had to say it. Even as it was coming out of my mouth, I knew it was stupid. Oh well.