THOUGHTS
Age is a state of mind, and I'm old
By Neal Schuster
I turned 25 yesterday. Not metaphorically either, but quite literally and even prosaically. After all, at 25, the exciting birthday milestones are really all done for: driving age, drafting age, drinking age. My consolation prize this year, rather like getting a goldfish for a present when you asked for a pony, is that I can now rent a car if I so choose. I have no plans to do so.
More dramatically, having attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, I am now qualified to become a member of the United States House of Representatives! This is akin to the savings bond you got at age ten, when $50 or $100 is almost more money than you could even imagine so it's all terribly exciting. But, as you have no way of accessing it to buy Transformers, in the course of the next decade you forget about it until, when you do finally remember, your youthful hopes and dreams and plastic toys in ruins, it only buys you enough coke to forget that you remembered. Honestly, what little kid without a trust fund grows up dreaming to be a member of Congress just as soon as he turns 25? In my fifth-grade class, there was only one, and he got beaten up every day at recess.
There may be those among you who would say "but you're 25, in the prime of life! Stop complaining, go forth and seize the day!" To these individuals, I tell you that I hate Horace and I don't eat world oysters. Here is a bucketful of raspberries, please keep reading. But more than that, birthdays aren't about inspiring your friends and family to take that last long shot at their wildest wishes, they're about consoling them when things don't work out the way they wanted. In my family, at least. We drink a lot.
But enough with these trivialities. As everyone knows, the real issues at birthday-time are the consolation prizes of Cake, Party, and Presents, and as long as all three are involved, usually the aging process isn't so bad. (Incidentally, in my view, the simplest and most elegant solution to the threefold question is the procurement of a cake with a nude female inside. Not that I'm casting any aspersions on the party efforts of my friends and family; I'm just sayin'.) At any rate, for my quarter-century anniversary, there were a number of small cakes, people called and whatnot, and I think I'm getting some airplane tickets? Batting .500 on each part isn't so bad, though I may be only saying that on account of my mellow old age.
What I'm trying to put my finger on, I think, is that despite protestations from every quarter (or at least the older ones), I maintain that I am now officially Old, a state I would define as "anticipating future life less than future death." In fact, I've been old for a couple of years now, and I think I can pinpoint exactly when any person becomes old. When? On the first birthday they're not excited to turn whatever year old it is they are turning. This age may vary, naturally, like lifespan, and my working (and quite unprovable) hypothesis is that the moment is like the turning of an hourglass, when the second half of one's sands start unmistakably slipping away. It would certainly explain the phenomenon of "midlife crisis." But check back with me in a quarter-century; if I'm right, I'll be dead.
At any rate, the only milestone birthday coming up now that I'm House-eligible (not including 30, The Official Death of Being Even Nominally Young and the reason a disproportionate number of females are 29), will be at 35, when I, assuming I've fallen into a few tens of millions of dollars, can run for President. Past 35, the only gates left unopened are those of Saint Peter and the PGA Senior Tour. All I know is, there had better be some big damn cakes at those parties.
God, I'm so old.