are great when you’re young. Remember the excitement!!! It was the one day that everyone focused on me. Mom would make my favorite dinner, there were presents, friends sleeping over, I was sometimes even be allowed to have a whole pop soda cola (whatever you want to call the carbonated flavored beverage that I was NEVER allowed to have more then a sip or two of at any given time, an injustice that I firmly plan to continue with my future kids, poor souls).
Well, as you get older, birthdays seem to become less and less fun and more and more… well, hard. Turning 21 is great… 22 wasn’t so bad, 23 was pretty traumatic, and 24 just makes me feel responsible. I think that this birthday marks the end of my life as I know it. I no longer have the age scape-goat. You know, the little voice in your head that says: “You’re still young, so it’s ok to drive too fast on an icy road, nothing will happen,” or “Go ahead and drink obscene amounts of alcohol, smoke twelve million packs of cigarettes, stay up until the crack of dawn, sleep two hours and because you’re young, you’ll be fine the next day.” I think the last time I did that was my birthday last year, and I’m scared to ever try it again, because I felt like a train-wreck for a week afterwards. Funny how I really could do that at 21 and 22, and then it was over the day I turned 23…
The older I get, the less invincible I feel. My sisters took me ice skating yesterday. I used to be fearless on skates, and even though I was never ever very good, I was daring. I’d try anything, from little jumps to twirls and blindly going backwards a top speed. Well, yesterday it hit me: I’m no longer daring; I’ve turned into a yellowbellied coward. I’m CAREFUL now!!! I didn’t fall once on the ice, because I skated forward in a nice straight line and I didn’t go to fast and I didn’t take any chances.
The epiphany I experienced at the ice-rink really shook me to the core. Almost against my will, I’m maturing. I’m losing my daring, adventurous side, and becoming *gasp* mundane. I have money in a 401K for goodness sakes. I bet that I didn’t even know what a 401K even was this time last year! And where did the seeming endless supply of energy go? Now, I bet I couldn’t even make it through a morning without coffee. I used to only drink coffee late at night when I had a paper to write and I’d still fall asleep at my computer. Now, I have to be careful not to drink any caffeine after noon, or I’ll be up all night. If I had the energy and stamina I had at 21, I’d be so much more productive at my job; I’d be able to drink all the coffee I want and still sleep like a hibernating skunk, and be able to party it up and wake up the next day after 4 1/2 hours of sleep and be unfazed. Those were the days.
Youth truly is wasted on the young.
