Ancient

I enrolled in a short course to improve my teaching skills. During the first day of class, I was surprised to find out that my classmates are college students (taking up early childhood education) and my teacher is only 3 batches ahead of me! I felt ancient! Especially, when the students who come from the same university where I graduated started talking among themselves about the new buildings and facilities in the campus! Then, I said to myself "hey, this is my second career path already so that gives me the right to be old in here." (talk about being insecure about my age, huh? :p) and just sat there and participated as much as I could.

Until it came to a drill wherein we all had to quickly (as in a milli-second)but silently read a question and call out our answer out loud at the same time. Questions are answerable by a single word. Then this question came:

Are you married?

Surprise. Surprise (heavy on sarcasm here). I was the only one who answered "Yes". And I saw that everyone gave me a quick glance before we all moved on to the next question.

As expected, after the drill, everybody started asking "You're married na?" -- in their collegiala tone. Including my teacher! And here's how the rest of the conversation went.

Everybody: You're married na?

Me: Yes (with a grin). (Or I think I may just have nodded and grinned. Whatever.)

Collegiala 1: Grabe. Bata mo pa.

Me: Hahaha! Why how old do you think I am (yes, i was fishing, hehe)?

Collegiala 2: 23.

Me: Shaking my head. Smiling.

Collegiala 1: 24?

Me: Nope. Smile.

Collegiala 3: 26?

Me: Shaking my head.

Collegiala 1: Higher?

Me: Yes. Much higher.

All of them: 27? 30? 31!

Me (thinking it was taking too long): I'm 33. Turning 34 by the end of the year.

All of them (yes, in their collegiala voices): OMG! You don't look it! I swear! You look 23, or something!

We moved on to talking about how it was during my days in college, how different it was...how low tech it was! Then they starting asking me questions as if I was the Dalai Lama!

And at that point, I felt wise, rather than ancient.