Ageism

I am older than sixteen.
It’s pompous, but then, I am that. I am pompous, arrogant, prideful. And I believe that I’m right.
People don’t take me, take us, younger people, seriously. No one older takes teenagers seriously.
But I want them to see—I am a human, a person, a thinker, not a sixteen-year old. See me as an equal.
If you can’t tell how old I am by talking to me, does it matter?
I don’t force it, though, and I don’t know why. I make it comfortable for them to take what they expect of me, instead of fighting and talking to prove that I am more. I submit when they want to feel superior.
Perhaps because I feel that if they’re blind enough to let prejudice and stereotypes rule them—if they’re childish enough to patronize me—then they’re not worth my trouble. They may as well keep their beliefs.
People want to know your age to be able to place you in a box. They need to construct an image of what you are, how to act towards you, in their minds, and one of the main parameters is age.
When an adult hears I’m sixteen, he or she can immediately shut off all need to impress me, all feeling of equality. They walk carefully around me in talk about sex, drugs, hard life—things perhaps their stereotyped sixteen-year old doesn’t talk seriously, maturely, about.
Age discrimination—they always talk about it with old people. Well, grandparents are better off than we are. They’re better respected than teenagers by a long shot.
I want the world, to think of me not as a sixteen-year old but just as a person. As an adult.
I’m tired of being written off because I’m young. I’m not an imbecile and I’m not a child.

I am a human.