Too Young

I nearly forgot! I had another "curse of looking young" experience last week and I nearly forgot to blog it. If anyone thinks looking young has no disadvantages then they never heard my past history--of being pulled over the week I got my license because the officer thought I wasn't old enough to drive, or when I was trying to sell pest control in New Orleans and someone called the cops thinking I was some kid that stole an Orkin shirt and was walking around conning people. For some reason the cops are usually the ones who seem to act on their opinion that I'm too young for something.

This week, Monday night I believe, I was outside testing the robot late into the night. I noticed two different police cars drive by about five minutes apart from each other, but thought they were just patrolling the parking lots. A few minutes later one of the officers came back, a short female officer, and stopped her Explorer and got out. All I thought was "Great, the female ones are the meanest. What now?" She approached me and started asking me what the strange contraption was that I was using and what it was for. I explained that it was for a student robot competition in Michigan. She made me a bit nervous so my explanations were pretty simple and of course I was mumbling. The whole time while I was explaining I was trying to think of what to say to sound official--exactly what an unofficial would sound like. So I guess the officer picked up on it, or something else, and asked for my drivers license and student ID. I pulled them out, handed them to her and then went back to work (since I was far behind schedule). She then explained that she wanted to call in my information in case something came up missing and then got on her radio and called in my name, drivers license number, birth date, and student ID number. I thought to myself "Is this place really that unsafe that she wants my info in case I get mugged and someone steals the robot?" After the whole official business was over she handed back my IDs and was off. It took me about ten minutes of wondering to realize that when she said "in case something has gone missing" she meant that I was the thief and was waiting for a report for a missing robot. What was she thinking? That I was some punk kid that decided to steal a robot from campus at two in the morning and my hideout was pretending to use it in the parking lot? I guess the robot must have worked quite poorly in order for her to think I didn't know how to use it.