I got thrown out of a restaurant today, and was asked to please not come back.
The frustrating thing was that I hadn't done anything except sit down at a table and expect to be served, as I have on more than a dozen afternoons since moving to the area. No hard feelings, Rebecca, said the store owner, in a faultlessly supercilious tone of voice. It's the law-you can't be here. The deal was sugar-coated by a free lunch to go, but I still left my former hangout feeling like I had a yellow star pinned to my sweater.
I live in West Virginia now, and according to this restauranteur, state law prohibits anyone under 18 from being served anything, at any time, in a restaurant with a liquor license. We're not talking alcohol here, where 21-and-up reigns supreme. We're talking soup, a salad at lunchtime, a glass of iced tea-anything.
As a reporter for the regional newspaper in this area, I lead a fairly standard life. Every morning I wake up in my apartment, pull on a skirt and trot off to the office. Every two weeks I get a meager paycheck, which I use to pay my bills. Except for the fact that I have a few more weeks before my 18th birthday, my routine seems reasonably orderly for a 1995 Duke graduate.
Over the years I have learned to deal with not being able to drive, go to most clubs and vote, among other things. But not being able to eat lunch feels like my own personal Jim Crow law-if I stick around, the cops come to throw me out and preserve this woman's liquor license.
It could be worse, I suppose. Most people here don't know how old I am, or seem not to care if they do. No one has questioned my competence (at least not so I can hear about it.) But every time I walk by Tari's Premier Cafe-the main hangout in the little town of Berkeley Springs-I am reminded of just what I am not and the legal right of restauranteurs to remind me.
It's not the few weeks before I can go back that gets to me. No big deal-I mean, I have enough to eat, a job and a future, and overall things are pretty good. It's the hurt of being denied something available to every other member of this community because of something I cannot control any more than I can my skin color. These next weeks seem to cover the past six years and the legal hurdles I've had to face on top of all the personal obstacles.
I was not permitted to go on tour with my a cappella group at my first college, before I transferred to Duke, nor was I permitted to study abroad there. I still can't vote, and although I signed my own lease the phone had to be in my parents' name as well as my own. I pay adult taxes and take on adult responsibilities, but many adult privileges are still denied me.
So often minorities are dismissed as being antagonistic and self-pitying, seeing themselves as perpetual victims and prejudiced against those who are not like them. When you have been a true minority and tried to express your feelings, it turns the tables upside down. Suddenly you feel as though you must justify your very existence to those around you. Your entire livelihood is at stake, and yet to be taken seriously you must speak, act and behave as if you have nothing to prove. No matter how strong the pressures, how unjust the action, if you ever let it get to you, it is seen as a sign of losing perspective and becoming hysterical.
In my case, I think, prejudice was usually rooted in a base belief that I was immature and unqualified rather than some irrational ethnic dislike. Because of this my personal foibles have always been subject to extreme scrutiny. One in my position is expected to be quiet, respectful and gratified to have been permitted this privilege of studying in such a fine university with so many of my elders. But I didn't want to let my age-and I started out six years younger than my classmates-define the scope of the roles I was able to play on a college campus. My presence at Duke and at Mary Baldwin was determined by my ability. I was judged using the same academic and extracurricular guidelines as my traditional classmates, and I wanted equal standing in all areas of college life.
Unlike the plight of blacks, women, gays and other minorities, there's no civil rights movement for me. I'm a minor-that's the same word we use to mean "inconsequential." My situation is unique enough and transient enough that any fuss I made could be seen as either whining, and thus proving my immaturity, or not worth fighting because it will be over soon. People sympathize with the restaurant owner. They don't see that however well meaning she may be, in my world she is the bus driver and I am Rosa Parks.
But there's no higher law in force here, no higher ethic to which I can appeal. After all, I'm just a minor.
Rebecca Christie is a Trinity '95 graduate.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.