18

Thanks to my girlfriend for making my birthday special, she really does care, unlike some other people *cough* parents *cough*.

Today, I join the age of majority in my province, which is 18. Technically, now I'm a person, according to law. Before, I was some liberty-less named entity that was the property of my parents. Thats right. Before the age of majority, people are not even considered human beings. We (now they) get treated under a competely different set of rights, often which directly conflict with our enshrined rights in the Canadian Charter.

A case in point, a while ago in my city, they enacted a smoking bylaw that stated anyone under the age of 18 may not be in any interior space where smoking is allowed. Basically, I could not go where smokers liked to frequent. Somehow, City Hall deemed that smoke would affect minors more than people who were over the age of 18. So therefore, if I was caught in a smoking location, I could be fined, rather than the people who were smoking... when neither of us are doing anything technically wrong. They are smoking in a smoking area, and I'm not (I at the time was underage). And yet... still they continued with the BS until they finally passed the anti-smoking bylaw.

Also, there is the small matter of government/corporate treatment. My bank would regularly yank my chain, making me stand a wait while they verified everything about me... since you know, I fraud my paycheques from my boss (when he has virtually every security feature on his cheques). They forever maintained that I was guilty until proven innocent... not once, but every time I tried to deposit a goddamned cheque. I have places to go, and people to meet.

And as for the GST rebate. Everyone was bragging that they got a GST rebate back from the government. All I got was a letter telling me that my little golden egg had been witheld because I was not of the age of majority. So great, I payed EI and CPP and income tax, ever since I've worked, just to be told that I can't get a bit of it back, because I shouldn't have been paying any in the first place.

If I had to flip my middle finger every time either a bank or the government has done something rediculous to me, I would be pointing, printing, and gesticulating with it day in and day out for the next 18 years of my life.

Christ, if women can get the rights and respect they deserve, why can't working teens?