aamcnamara

I found this post really interesting, because of what I remember of my teen years (and I'm not quite so old and decrepit as to have completely forgotten them) I see similarities to both your experiences and mrissa's in various ways.

I had way too many "OH HAI KIDDO U R SO CUTE WHEN U TRY TO TALK" moments when I was younger, made worse by the fact that I had a pretty young-looking face even for my age, so your righteous anger sounds familiar. On the other side, once I got to college and was participating on various mailing lists and newsgroups I had people mistaking me for a postdoc when I was still a teenaged undergraduate...not because I was trying to be deceptive, but because what they saw of me was distilled down to my ability with written communication and that was something I was good at.

The grade/age discussion (where you stuck with age-peers and mrissa skipped a grade) is particularly amusing, because I skipped 1st grade, repeated 3rd grade to get back into a group of my age-peers, bumped up a couple of grades (but just in math) starting in 6th grade, and eventually started a year in 9th grade and ended it in 11th.

I may or may not be one of the people you look up to (I suspect not, actually) but based on what I'm seeing from you in this discussion I'd take you as at least an equal.