Feeling Old?

I'm only twenty-three years old, and I can honestly say that I have never felt old. Also, I have never felt like an old maid. An experience last week almost made me feel that way. Almost.

I volunteered to can beef soup at the cannery to help needy families. Actually, I just volunteered because Brother Shweider snagged me at the temple because there weren't enough people going. I'm not that generous.

There were only two people there from our branch: me and my home teacher.

For the entire morning, I was standing straight across from a tall, gangly missionary, complete with freckly skin, red hair, and glasses. He had a habit of sticking his large nose out in front of him and following it, like Tucan Sam, only not as cool. He had small, vacant eyes that would stare at objects for a long time.

The object of his desire was a newly-graduated girl of eighteen years, full of hope and dreams for her first year of collage. She was also full of delicious gossip from her high school: gossip that would be obsolete in a couple of weeks, when she would forget these people's names entirely and be wrapped up in a new college boyfriend. Ah, sweet youth.

I was enjoying this conversation that I didn't even have to contribute to; I just had to stand there and let the sweet words float to my ears and take me back to my former hopes and dreams of college. As I was daydreaming, I noticed that the red-headed missionary was staring intently at my face, his eyes squinting with scrutiny.

"How old are you?" he asked in a nasally voice filled with awe and plain nosy-ness.

"Twenty-three," I told him, thinking this was going to be the beginning of some light chit-chat.

"Oh," he said, and walked away.

He continued talking with the eighteen-year-old about high school gossip and what college was going to be like.

Two hours later, I was getting motion sickness from looking at the cans of soup go by on the conveyor belt. I took a second to look up and stretch my back and was startled to find that the red-headed missionary had been staring at me for quite some time, sticking his nose out and squinting as he analyzed every feature on my face.

"Are you married?"

"No."

Silence.