Dillinger

Connor MacLeod: I've been alive for four and a half centuries, and I cannot die.

Brenda: Well, everyone's got their problems.

Three years ago, on a visit home to Canada, the wife (then girlfriend) and I went into Rogers Video (and, boy, I sure don't miss paying 5 bucks to rent a DVD). I selected Halloween, one of my favorite films. I stepped up to the counter and handed the movie's box to the young girl working there. She asked me for my membership card, then, a little shyly, whether I was over 18 years old.

"Yeah, I'm 24. Do you want to see my driver's license?"

She shook her head, taking me at my word.

This was by no means an isolated incident. Since I turned 19, I have had numerous hassles buying beer or cigarettes. Once -- and I swear to god this is true -- I was refused addmittance to a nightclub in Hull, Quebec because the bouncer said my license was obviously doctored. I tried to put up a fuss, backing down only when he threatened to "kick my fucking ass." Hell, I've even been asked to show ID here in Korea. During my second year here, trying to buy some beer in a small corner store, the ajumma who worked there asked me my age. I told her, but she just laughed and shook her head until my wife (then concubine) came to the rescue and helped me out. Upon leaving, the ajumma apologized, saying that she honestly believed I was some high school-aged army brat.

I thought that maybe all that was behind me; that, after getting married and having a child, some age definition had finally touched my features. I guess I was wrong.

Today I went to play basketball. The forecast was for cloudy skies (I could see that much simply by looking out the window) and a 40% chance of rain. I took that chance. Sunday basketball is as sacred to me as Sunday church service is to my folks.

It drizzled off and on for an hour and a half, though nothing heavy enough to stop play. The court, regularly bare despite its quality, was today swarming with players of all ages and talent levels. Too bad it had to start pouring at around 3 o' clock.

Shortly before then, one of the guys whom I was playing on a team with asked me my age. I told him. Actually, my first instinct was to lie. I had an inkling that he wouldn't believe me were I to state my true age, and I imagined briefly that all incredulous looks and widened eyes could be thwarted by one small white lie.

Instead I told the truth; and, reliably, he was shocked (though I was, too, when he told me he was 20; I had thought he was a high school student perhaps in his freshman or sophomore year).

When I was in middle school (which I used to refer to as junior high before moving to Korea and becoming an English teacher), my parents first discovered that I was smoking fairly regularly. One of the warnings my mother, uh, warned me of was that smoking stunts one's growth. I don't know if it's true, but if it is, maybe smoking (along with the occasional tiger penis and rhinoceros horn ) has fortuitously been my Fountain of Youth.

Which is all well and good. Everyone would like to look young, especially when they start approaching middle age. But it does get annoying not being taken seriously as an adult because of my looks. Because of work I dress semi-professionally most days, yet still I get treated like a teenager, both here and back in my home country. Plus I have this fear that when I approach 40, or maybe 50, I'll look like Ron Howard, who still looks somewhat like he did when he starred in American Graffitti, only with a heroin addiction.

Then again, maybe there's some longevity for me as a narc. I could infiltrate high schools like Peter Delouise and Johnny Depp used to do on 21 Jump Street.

Which would be pretty fucking cool.

For those curious, here is a photo of me taken last Christmas: