All Downhill From Here
Do you know what rocks? Being 21 and over (if you live in the US). Do you know. what sucks? Everything after the day you turn 21.
You spend years in college looking forward to being 21, longing to walk into a club unhassled (and usually with less financial loss than your under-21 counterpart), or to get a beer with your dinner, or just to see what the inside of a liquor store looks like. However, after the (very brief) novelty of drinking legally wears off, it soon becomes clear that drinking outside of your dorm sucks. You need to be able to drive to and from places, you need to pay astronomical prices for drinks, and at the end of the night, there's a much higher chance that you'll end up in jail.
The worst thing, of course, is that after 21 there are really only 2 birthdays to look forward to: 25 (The year you can rent a car), and 67 (the year when the government starts paying you to not die). And that's it. Those are the only 2 years to look forward to for the rest of your professional life.
As I have just turned 23, I can say there is nothing exciting about aging anymore. The biggest thrill I get on my birthday is when I actually remember how I know the people posting on my Facebook wall. (Oh, that's right. We were engaged for 3 months! I remember you now!)
Getting older just sucks across the board. As you get older, things start happening to you, like instead of wanting to go out to a club and listen to terrible music, you'd rather, say, go to sleep at 11:30 because you have to get up at 7 to make it to work. Or, instead of launching into a four-day drinking bing, you may head to the doctor to get your blood pressure checked. And instead of spending the night trying to put your bits into other people's orificies, you'll have to prepare yourself for the inevitability that a doctor is going to stick his hand up your ass.
To me, a birthday just renders terrible images like that. Along those lines, the following is an absolutely real (and entirely uncensored) e-mail that my mother sent me on my birthday:
Hi Zach,
Do you want to know what I was doing 23 years ago today??????????????????
Fortunately, we did NOT make a video!
Have a great day
Happy Birthday
Love,
Mom
Really, that was my own mother. Which is probably why I, unlike most Americans, just don't want to celebrate my birthday. I don't want to remember that there was a time of my life that I spent inside of my mother. I don't want to remember that a year ago today, I was partying like the world was going to end every day, and I don't want to think about how the next time I'll have that much free time I'll be dead (or at least nearly dead). So if you see me on my birthday, please don't say "Happy Birthday." Please just introduce yourself, explain how you know who I am, and I will probably back away slowly.
