Birthdays

Birthdays are an extremely odd occurrence in my mind. When people are young birthdays are like another Christmas. You can’t go to sleep because of the excitement and adrenaline coursing through your veins. Young children imagine opening those wrapped boxes anxious to see what is hidden inside. Teens already know the content of those wrapped boxes, but they don’t care. The excitement of taking that gift into possession at last is enough for them. Young adults lose that exhilaration to discover the mystery enclosed in a wrapped box. They are now beginning to open just cards with money, not for recreational purposes, but (if they are smart) to pay their expenses. Then somewhere along the timeline that we call life, the enthusiasm and joy that once consumed the birthday has vanished into thin air. All of a sudden, birthdays are a dreaded event that comes to haunt you. With every year something in your head says, “Oh no, we’re getting really old here.” Why did the magic go? Is it because of the redundancy of birthdays? No, other holidays posses the same quality, but never get tiring.
Considering I am freshly nineteen, I can only predict the true reason why that delightful day suddenly transformed into a nightmare: age. It is funny how birthdays come full circle. At fifteen years old, you CANNOT wait for your sixteenth birthday because of what it represented. It meant a driver’s license! At twenty years old, you CANNOT wait for your twenty-first birthday. You can now legally purchase alcohol! The anxiety of being too young takes hold. You wish your life away and before you know it you are celebrating your thirty-fifth birthday. But then I suppose that’s when the magic gets sucked out of the birthday fiasco: when one looks back and says, “Where did thirty-five years go?”
We have invented all sorts of little phrases to make people feel better about their ever increasing age. “You’re only as young as you feel,” or “Age ain’t nothing but a number.” There is truth in these sayings that most people don’t really believe. My parents are in their fifties, but they might as well be thirty. My mother can wear my clothes (and look great), while my dad can still outrun me. Age is a label, a counting system that we apply to people to keep everything organized. Being over fifty has meant nothing to my parents physically or mentally, it’s just another year on this planet.
I have wished my life away. I have been insanely excited for my birthday. I have even started receiving money for my birthday. I also have come to the decision that I do not want to grow up. In reality, I will accumulate years, and the magic will quickly escape from my birthday, but why not have as many birthdays as possible? Someday when there are no more left, I’ll be more thankful to have had ninety-five than only nineteen.