Hoist

When I was little, I liked to sit on counters.  Whenever I accompanied my mom to the grocery store or the library, I would always ask her to pick me up and place me on the counter.  At home I would hoist myself onto our kitchen counter, using the washing machine below to boost myself up, only to have my dad yell at me to get down when he came into the room.  I don't know why I thought this was so neat.  Maybe I liked that sitting up there made me a little taller; even at such a young age, I was comparably shorter next to my youthful classmates.  Apparently I looked young as well.  One day my mom and I went to the library and picked a few books to check out.  I remember this was the summer that I was going into second grade; when we walked up to the counter to have our books scanned, the librarian looked down at me with her kind eyes and told me that with the books I had chosen, I was a really good reader for being in preschool.  Preschool?  Really?  I was seven.  I simply looked up at my mom, slightly annoyed.  I was too shy to tell the librarian that I was actually older than her assumption.  My mom read my thoughts and informed the woman behind the counter of my actual age, and she apologized immediately, as if she knew her comment would stay with me for awhile.  It did, but after this point, I became used to these sort of comments.  I got used to people saying "you'll appreciate it when you're older."  It has been thirteen years since that fateful day at the library, and I still get these comments.  I wonder if things will ever change.