Bread Focus Groups, Painful Literary Devices, and Other People's ID's

Continuing the chronicles of my search for extra pocket money, I give you the latest update.  I've gotten so desperate that I've started searching Craigslist under the "ETC" category.  While there are lots of advertisements for jobs that I don't care to mention (probably because they're not legal) I've been coming across these "focus" groups that promise several hundred dollars for an hour or so of answering questions.  One of them was a bread focus group.  Figuring I could put my constant consumption of carbs to good use, I applied for it.  Here's the email I sent them, word for word:

"Hello, my name is Elizabeth.  I am a 27-year-old woman living in Brooklyn.  I am inquiring about your bread focus group.  I would like to speak with you about participating; I certainly eat a lot of bread, so I might as well make some dough off of it!  (Pun totally intended.)  Hope to hear from you."

I can tell what you're thinking: I'm really desperate to get my writing out there.  So desperate that I will subject these poor apathetic marketing folks to painful literary devices and plays-on-words.  P.S.--I haven't heard back from them yet.  Guess they weren't impressed.  But the more disturbing thing to me, as I read the email back to myself, was that I unintentionally shaved a whole year off my life.  I'm twenty-eight--not twenty-seven--and I didn't even realize that I did this until I had already sent the email out. 

So now I'm left with a conundrum.  No, I'm not concerned that I inadvertently lied to the good people at Wonderbread, although I might have some explaining to do if they contact me and ask for some ID.  The problem is that I don't know which is worse: that I'm becoming so old that I'm actually losing my memory and for a few seconds, forgot my own age, or that I am subconsciously becoming the stereotypical woman who lies about her age.   Granted, if I wanted to, it would be extremely easy for me to pass for younger than my age, since I do look younger, I've been told.  But I've never understood why people do this.  I mean, if you're lucky enough to look thirty when you're forty, wouldn't you want to brag about it? 

Age is such a funny thing.  Before I was twenty-one, all I wanted to do was look older so that I wouldn't get questioned going into bars.  My friends and I used to go to such great lengths to become someone who was a few years older than we were, whichever older sister's friend's cousin's ID we happened to be using at the time.  We would change our hair, memorize strange addresses and Zodiac signs, and avert our eyes from the bouncer, hoping he wouldn't notice that, according to the ID, we were supposed to have blue eyes.  Then one night a bartender told us that determining who was twenty-one or older had nothing to do with your look, your lies, or your ID.  It was all about the way you carried yourself, your swagger, something he could perceive but couldn't describe, and you couldn't obtain it until you were actually an adult.  This little bit of information, to say the least, was very discouraging. 

Now that I am an adult, I sometimes wish that I hadn't spent so much time trying to grow up faster and just enjoy being a kid.  My concerns now, instead of whose ID I'm going to use on Friday night, are bills, careers, deciding when to start a family, and debating if I should dye my hair because I can see a few gray roots.  And I know that a lot of you reading this are probably thinking I should shut the hell up, because twenty-eight is still pretty young, and I have a lot of years of living (and whining) to do.  And you'd be absolutely right.

But although I am a little older, and I'd like to think a little wiser, I wouldn't trade the feeling of successfully sneaking into Salty Dog at age nineteen for anything. 

All right.  I'll shut the hell up now.