I'm not cute.

Every once in a while one of my co-workers will giggle and say to me, "Donita, you're so cute!"  I think she's around twenty years old and she's quite the girlie girl.  Usually I'll get this comment after I've done something smart (in her eyes, anyway).  I've told her a few times that I'm not cute, just experienced.  She doesn't get it.

I recently read an article about some of the things that younger people will say to a woman over fifty. Often it's something like, "You're so cute!" or "I love older people.  They're so adorable."  At my sister's fiftieth birthday a very drunk 20-something girl said to me, "I love you!  You're sooo oooolllld!"  She said it more than once.  Jesus Christ.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because it's been happening a lot and it's kind of a new thing for me.  Apparently I've reached the age where young, pretty girls think it's clever to give me this belittling, back-handed compliment.  The next one to do it may end up missing a handful of hair.

Listen up, girlie, and ponder this a while.  I'm almost sixty years old.  If you don't die in a texting accident, you will someday be where I am now.  One day you will do or say something in the presence of some future twenty-year-old, who will marvel at the cleverness and common sense you achieved from a lifetime of experience, and she will somehow be threatened by it.  She will giggle and say to you, "You're so cute!"

One thing I can say with certainty: when I was young I NEVER said anything like this to an older person.  I'm grateful for that.