Eligibility

I’ll restate that my birthday is June 30. This year, I will be eighteen. I personally can’t tell you what age people randomly peg me for, because I’m not in a position of people directly remarking, often. But I dunno, there are pictures in the Gallery and on here, so what do you think?

Jerrica, my little sister, turned six last May, and for a six year old, she’s pretty big [height-wise. she isn't fat]. The average person guesses her, from a glance, to be nine or so.

This post will really point out how big the underage motherhood problem is…I was in the supermarket with my dad and little sister and we reach the checkout lanes. While bagging the groceries, I was also minding the little one because she, as many little ones, likes to run around and cause chaos.

A little boy comes up to us, looks up at me and goes, “How old is your daughter?”

…facepalm.

“She isn’t my daughter…she’s my six year old sister,” I replied, nonplussed.
“Oh. Well where’s your mama?”
“At work…?”
He spouts some incoherent stream that ended with, “so you can’t see your daddy?”
“…er, what? Our father is there,” and I point to him, exchanging bills with the cashier.
The boy goes, “Oh!” and skitters off.

Obviously, I’m bewildered. The bad thing is that it isn’t even the first time it’s happened…so I SHOULDN’T be bewildered, but each and every time…

To put it bluntly, I was not even physically/biologically capable of getting pregnant for several months after my sister was born. She was conceived a couple months after I turned eleven, and born a month and a half before I turned twelve. I mean, obviously the public does not know this, but do I look THAT old?

No, I can’t possibly. And I don’t. It induced a momentary stroke of vanity–I have long, shapely legs, a flat stomach, thin arms, and A-cups. There’s nothing about me that suggests ever having been pregnant. I graduated high school on Friday night, for chrissakes. I’m not even eighteen!

I reflected on my family’s brief stint in Las Vegas. We’d go down to The Strip to do some shopping, etc. So, mom, dad, a two-year-old Jerrica and a fourteen-year-old me. We’d take turns pushing her stroller…mom’s fat and doesn’t walk quickly, you know, she’d lag a couple steps behind. People trying to trap tourists into bullshit with false flattery would intercept us, look at Jerrica, then at me, and go, “You have such a beautiful daughter!”
I’d look at them, disgusted and indignant; “I’m fourteen,” I’d say. “I don’t know how you’re raising your own daughters, but I was raised with a little more sense than to be spitting one out at age twelve. Don’t be so quick to assume.”
One of them looked at my father, then at me, and then at Jerrica and said, “You’ve got such a lovely little girl! Did you get hitched here, for her?” and they implied my mom was her grandmum–which offended the shit out of her, too. Don’t even try to imagine the flurry of rage I was thrown into then! My dad has a full [greying!] beard–and was 44 then–I mean, it’s only obvious that he’s marrying his fourteen year old daughter and mother to his other daughter/granddaughter. WTF. Beyond that, I very blatantly resemble my father. Both facially and in build I resemble him more than my mother. You’d have to be blind to look at us and not be like, “Obviously RELATED.” My older siblings, too, take after our father moreso than our mom(s).

It then dawned on me that, after thinking of things, “No, of course I don’t look particularly matronly. However…his idea of what a mommy looks like isn’t my idea of what a mommy looks like. He probably has family, or friends of family–or even his OWN mother–that are so young that it’s perfectly normal/acceptable to him. So it isn’t even an awkward insult, he just literally probably doesn’t know any better or differently.”

This really floors me. I know that it’s a problem, but ffs. For someone who looks as young as I do to be pegged as, “Mommy,” is outrageous! This is not, or should not be, commonplace! Goddamn people, it isn’t like contraceptives are hard to come by or generally hard to use. And if you’re one of those people who doesn’t agree with the use of them, then keep your legs closed until you’re of age, at least. If you can’t be bothered to use protection against STDs/pregnancy/what have you AND cannot deal with the consequences of these actions, then you have no goddamn business having sex, period.