This weekend we celebrated the successful completion of Mrs. ACW’s 28th year. This birthday has caused her a not insignificant amount of existential stress that I’m completely unable to understand.
If you were to ask me how old I am when I’m not really paying attention, chances are good that I would answer incorrectly, think about what I said, correct myself, and then continue thinking for a minute about whether my first answer was wrong, my second answer, or both. It’s not something that I really pay attention to, or put much thought into. This is not to be confused with my birthday itself, which I pay quite a bit of attention to, and am very aware of.
Good grief, could I end more sentences with prepositions? I’m writing like an illiterate Republican. But I repeat myself. Zing! I’m just joking, almost all the Republicans I know are smart and well-spoken, but seriously, don’t forget to vote tomorrow. Wait, what’s that over there? It’s THE END OF THIS POINTLESS DIGRESSION!
So, yeah, I know some of you people get all worked up about your age too, and I really just don’t get it. First of all, like many things in our society, age is a construct created to classify what someone can/cannot do, or what someone should/should not do. It allows us to not have to ever think for ourselves and instead just slothfully lay about our homes, inhaling bowls of Doritos, and pointing at our televisions to laugh and judge people who are outside the norms. It’s why every few years as a crop of actresses get older we suddenly have “news” reports and articles in “magazines” like Cosmo about how 40 is the new 30, 30 is the new 20, and 20 is the new 18, and how it’s suddenly “okay” for 40 year olds to be sexy again. Why do we continue to buy this bullshit?
It’s akin to thinking that boys can’t be teachers because it’s a girl’s job, or that girl’s can’t be doctors because it’s a boy’s job.* That’s stupid. Why impose these ridiculous criterion based solely upon whether your baby-maker is an innie or an outie? That’s stupid. It’s not as if when you turn 50 you suddenly won’t be able to do anything you weren’t doing 10, or 15, or 20 years before that. Sure, you might not be in as good of shape as you were then, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still play some video games and eat some nachos and watch some VH1.
Of course, like anything, there are extremes than can reinforce even the most unreasonable social restrictions. For example, all those women out there dressing like their teen-aged daughters. Stop it. Why not dress at least like twenty year old instead of a 15 year old? Have a little self respect. You’re not Mrs. Robinson. Nobody wants to bang you.
All this obsession with age in our culture has driven us all completely batshit bonkers over making rules about what different people can do or be based soley upon how long they’ve lived? Want to be president? You have to be 35. I don’t know about you, but I can think of a few 50 and 60 year olds who would be COMPLETELY horrible at the job *coughhuckabeecough*. Want to drink a beer? You have to be 21. Want to die for your country? You have to be 18. Seriously. What the hell is that about? Want to see two or more adults consensually mashing their genitals together? You have to be at least 18, because before that magical day when you turn 18, the sight of such a thing would destroy your brain. I’m sure there aren’t any 15 year olds doing the three-knuckle shuffle to weirder stuff in their heads.
Finally, time itself is a construct. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years exist for no other reason than we decided to name them and start measuring them. Time, as we have named it, is meaningless. We could arbitrarily change it to whatever we wanted, and eventually people would get used to it and complain about turning 4 years old. Complaining doesn’t make any sense to me in a situation such as this. I’m much more of the mindset that, hey, it looks like I’ve got more than a few years left, so why not do some fun stuff to fill that time?
I realize not everyone is going to be swayed by this, and some folks will argue that because we live in a time of Dorito-eating finger-pointers, they are constrained by the judgmental gaze of the masses. To that I say: why do you even care what those imbeciles even think? The high-point of their lives will be that night when they were watching American Idol and the pizza guy forgot to charge them for the extra order of cheesy breadsticks. Who cares what that waste of skin thinks?
*In fairness to girls, the world would be a much nicer place if they’d get me a sandwich and then get back in the kitchen.
