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Surprising Relation

I get a lot of mistaken identities. I've been suspected of stealing my own car, and had random people assume that I was my own gardener. I also look young for my age, while simultaneously making old people plans on occasion. Throw in my apparently surprising penchant for speaking Spanish, and I'm just full of surprises for other people. All in all, it makes life pretty interesting.

Now, I've gotten used to it. I've clearly had plenty of those experiences (see the links in the above paragraph as proof), so it comes as no surprise any more. However, if there's a second person involved, things get exponentially funnier.

Take, for example, dinners out with the Mild Fiancée. She is only a year younger than me, but she looks even younger than that. We both get carded routinely, as we apparently do not look our age. For the record, that is not a complaint. The two of us will happily look young for the rest of our lives, but it's just funny when it happens. I've taken to asking waiters to guess how old I am before I give them my ID, and they're almost universally surprised by the actual number. The Mild Fiancée also has very similar experiences (though she doesn't usually ask them to guess).

That said, they can usually figure out that we are a couple. Recently, though, the fact that we look young led to a much more hilarious case of mistaken identity. She and I were at the hospital, and a nurse walked into the room. She greeted us, and asked me to identify myself. I think they all do that because it's some sort of a HIPAA regulation. Regardless, I gave her my name, so she knew who I was.

Without missing a beat, she turned to the Mild Fiancée, and asked, "And is this your ... mom?" We could both hear the hesitation in the nurse's voice, as even she could tell that that seemed unlikely. Still, those were the words that came out of her mouth. You know how you sometimes read that someone "erupted in laughter?" I know how that feels. I know how that looks, too, because the Mild Fiancée was right behind me in laughing her head off.

Once we finished laughing, we cleared up the actual relationship. After we took care of business, the Mild Fiancée and I realized that in order for the nurse to ask that question, we both would have had to look a LOT younger. Apparently, I looked like I was barely a teenager, and the Mild Fiancée had had a kid in her teens. That led to an entirely new bout of laughter, as we cracked up yet again.

Let's just say that it's going to take a while before that joke gets old.

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