I tried, I really did. In 2012, I enrolled in the local community college at 33-years-old. There was quite a large range in the ages of students. The youngest were just out of high school, about 18 or 19 years old, and in one of my classes, there was a woman who must have been in her 80's or 90's. So, we will say a 60-year difference in age ranges, just to make it easier. At 33-years-old, when I first enrolled at NCMC, I wasn't the oldest, but I was also far from the youngest. In my first semester, I was placed in a peer review group with a young girl (fresh out of high school) for an assigned essay in English Composition I. It was rather rude of me, but I completely spurned her assumed advances. To shed a little light on "what" exactly I did, let me explain.

It wasn't our first essay, in fact, I think it was our third or fourth one. The professor routinely separated us into groups of four students and we would swap our essays with each other so we would each go home with our classmates' work, analyze it and provide feedback on ways they could improve their writing. It seems like a solid idea if your teammates are not at the bottom of the class. This would allow us to improve our own writing by critically analyzing theirs. Like I said, it seemed like a pretty good premise, but it didn't always go that well. My first group was good, meaning they offered mostly good advice and I received an A on my paper. The only complaint I had about it was that one of my collaborator's papers had several problems and he was unwilling to take advice. No problem, maybe it wasn't the best advice; I was only in my first semester, but so was he. What he did was use three or four semicolons in one sentence and the phrases separated by the semicolons were not complete sentences as they should be. When I tried to explain that to him, he flat-out told me I was wrong and that I didn't know the rules as well as I thought I did; we will see. We did see, he received a lesser grade on that assignment. I'm not one to gloat, but it felt good when I was proven right.

The next one or two essays were not memorable: nothing stands out in my mind about them, not the teammates I had nor the essays I wrote, nothing. The one that does really stand out in my mind is the aforementioned one in which one of my teammates flirted with me after I told her that her essay looked pretty good but I thought she should change a few things. I assumed that I must've been too critical with the first one and so I tried to be gentle with her feelings. Oops, that wasn't the right thing to do; she apparently took it as meaning I was somehow romantically interested in her. She wasn't bad looking and her paper was pretty good which told me that she had at least some measure of intelligence. Here's the deal though: I was 33-years-old, I had a 9-year-old son and I was in no way romantically interested in someone 15 years younger than me. It wasn't anything against her; it made me feel much better about myself to have someone that much younger than me hitting on me. I considered asking her out for a total of maybe one minute, before I came to the conclusion that, even if she were to say yes (which I thought she likely would), I didn't want to start a new family; I loved my son and I enjoyed being his father (I still do, even though he's a teenager now), but he was nine-years-old, which meant I was halfway through his childhood. Looking back to my decisions and actions five years ago, I feel like a real jerk and I recognize that I was probably assuming more than she meant by her kind if seemingly flirty actions and words.

I wasn't that much of a catch that girls 15 years younger really wanted to date me. That is obvious now, I wasn't working at the time and I obviously didn't have my act together if that was the case; I was living with my mother at the time, and no matter what anyone thinks of that, I was deeply embarrassed by it. I decided that maybe she didn't realize the enormous age gap between us, so when I got home I decided to stop wearing my hat. I've been going bald since I was 17. That's when a friend first noticed/mentioned I had a significant bald spot in the place where hair loss usually becomes noticeable first. I didn't just set my hat somewhere out of the way. No, I put it in the garbage. I didn't set it on a shelf or my dresser where I could wear it again someday. I threw it away. It wasn't a bad hat, it was a Bud Light hat and I kind of liked it. I just assumed that it must make me look younger and I didn't like that.

The next class was two days later and I went to class without my hat for the first time. A few people gave me rather odd looks, some of them quite surprised, including my teacher. Me going hatless didn't have the effect I thought it would. I don't know what I thought people would do, but they didn't do a whole lot. The girl I was trying to turn off didn't say anything to me again: so, that was mission accomplished I guess. Nobody really said anything, which wasn't really a change. It wasn't like I was the most popular student or anything. I didn't really have that many friends in class. I sat in the front row like a good "teacher's pet" and I was always the first to raise my hand when the teacher asked a question. I was basically a nerd.

Just because I'm hardheaded like this, I never wore a hat to school again at NCMC. I felt this made me have more in common with the professors than with the other students and I kind of liked it. Those of you who are majoring in psychology can probably make some assumptions about my thought process; how healthy or unhealthy it was (and in many ways still is), how self-harming it was, and anyone can see that it probably wasn't the best idea. In fact, I think it's pretty stupid now.

I'd like to think I've learned a few things since then. I have my Associate's degree and am working on my Bachelor's now, after all.

1. I wouldn't be offended if this were to happen again, I might even consider dating someone that much younger than me now (if I was available).

2. That was probably a stupid thing to do because it just highlighted the differences between the rest of the students and me, which in no way made me fit in any better.

3. I should have been flattered and I would be if this happened now.

I'm sure everyone knows the saying about "assuming." I don't feel the need to bring that up here because, well, there's no need for that kind of language. What I do feel the need to do is explain what I did and why I did it. Hopefully, others will think twice before they do a similar thing. I just want you all to consider what this makes you look like. It kind of makes you look like a self-centered prick; that's what I feel like for having done it. Do yourselves a favor and think twice before you do something like this.