Today I celebrate – that is to say, largely ignore – my 35th birthday or, as I refer to think of it, the 15th anniversary of my 20th birthday. I have officially and inextricably entered my mid-30s. Not that I expected to suddenly feel the powerful urge to buy a sedan and really “get” Michael Bolton, but as the calendar pages form an ever-larger pile of rubbish on the ground I have come to appreciate more and more just how different I don’t feel. Sure, I’ve become more responsible, gathered my life together in such a way that I’ve reached a personally, professionally and financially viable point in life. Granted, my finances aren’t the only things that have spread over the last few years – and certainly I’ve started really thinking of my weight and my health in such a way that I’d like to stop unconsciously trying to beat it to death with a Twinkie™. But other than that, I really don’t feel much different than I did ten years ago. Many of the same absurd or peurile jokes make me laugh. I still have the urge to play jokes on my friends – though wisdom has taught me that some of them are really not the brilliant ideas that I once thought they were. I still enjoy the same sort of music, like most of the same TV shows (though I have developed a taste for more television crime dramas than I once had) and I’m still bedazzled by shiny objects. New toys still make me giddy.
These are by no means complaints. I rather like the fact that I can still feel like a bit of a kid, that I can in some intangible way maintain some sort of fun-loving connection to my youth. I’d like to continue to feel like that for a good long time. It just strikes me as odd if only because, when I was as young as I feel, 35 just seemed so far off and nobody I knew or saw that was in their 30s seemed to be happy about it. Must be a generational thing, I guess, because my only objection to it is that it put my foot one more inch into the grave. But that’s much too far off to even consider right now.
I’m 35, and I feel fine.
(But you still need to get the hell off the lawn)
