8/31/07
I’m going to be thirty years old this Halloween. And you know what? I’m glad.
Life seems more magical and fascinating as a child, mostly because it just plain is. Of course things were fascinating, how can they not be when you’re constantly encountering stuff the likes of which you’ve never seen before? As adults just about every single experience we have can be compared to ten other similar instances. "Yeah, that’s a pretty good apple pie, but I’ve had better." That sort of thing. Every smell, every taste, every day like something else we’ve had before, most likely before we reached our twentieth year.
No wonder people have mid-life crises; it’s not that you think you haven’t done anything with your life, it’s that you’ve done so much that nothing seems wondrous anymore. All the things you knew you wanted have arrived; they’re here. And now they have become that worst of dream killers; normal. So you have to strike out for the new and get back some of that magic you had when you were sixteen and you still thought the world was yours for the taking. But all too often this perfectly healthy desire for
new experience manifests itself in the most ass-way possible and one morning you realize you’re just a balding douchebag inside trendy jeans and a Corvette. For whatever reason it seems people want to hang onto their youth forever nowadays. “Oh, thirty is the new twenty!” Jesus, really? Well that’s depressing. I like my age. I like that I don’t have to forever experience the turmoil, insecurity and downright goofiness of upper adolescence anymore. I like that I’m boring and un-cool and don’t speak in lingo that a fifteen year old finds comforting. Though, strictly speaking, I was never "cool." I like responsibility...to a point. But what’s wrong with being an adult?
Besides, new and amazing and totally-unlike-anything-in-the-world things still happen. The moon landing, for instance, buying your first house, saying “I do,” watching your baby being born, actually believing in a politician. All of these are wholly unique and un-imitatable. It seems they get fewer and farther between the older you get. Is that such a bad thing, though? If they didn’t thin out your poor old psyche could never survive past age 30. But try to imagine—or
better yet, even remember—what it was like going to a county fair for the first time. Sure, they’re routine and some of the shine has come off the apple now, but what if you’d never seen one before? Maybe there’s a two-headed calf in the oddities display! Who knows what could be around the next corner; you don’t know! The sound and presence of the crowds, the burnt sugar smell of cotton candy and a not wholly unpleasant tang of large barnyard animals and hay, the taste of staggeringly sweet root beer in those tiny plastic jugs, the stomach-dropping tickle of a rickety rollercoaster run by people you wouldn’t entirely trust to tend a goldfish. The bizarre, cheap games on the midway that even then you knew were rigged. The sheer, blissful pleasure of being out on a warm summer night, allowed to stay up to the deliriously late hour of ten o’clock, and having all the endless eternity of life stretching out into the horizon ahead of you. Can you hear it? Can you smell it, dear readers?
And that’s just a shitty little county fair. Think about your first love, huh? It’s an impossible thing to bottle, that feeling. You can’t keep that sort of shiny new tingle any more than a puppy can keep from growing into a dog. And that’s okay. It’s okay that as we age some of the magic goes out of things. As long as we still remember, and keep ourselves open to it when a pale version of that magic shows up, it’s okay. Because nostalgia is the butterfly version of childhood magic. And that tastes pretty sweet, too. Go ahead, act your age, you’ve earned it.
I’m going to be thirty years old this Halloween. And you know what? I’m glad.
Life seems more magical and fascinating as a child, mostly because it just plain is. Of course things were fascinating, how can they not be when you’re constantly encountering stuff the likes of which you’ve never seen before? As adults just about every single experience we have can be compared to ten other similar instances. "Yeah, that’s a pretty good apple pie, but I’ve had better." That sort of thing. Every smell, every taste, every day like something else we’ve had before, most likely before we reached our twentieth year.No wonder people have mid-life crises; it’s not that you think you haven’t done anything with your life, it’s that you’ve done so much that nothing seems wondrous anymore. All the things you knew you wanted have arrived; they’re here. And now they have become that worst of dream killers; normal. So you have to strike out for the new and get back some of that magic you had when you were sixteen and you still thought the world was yours for the taking. But all too often this perfectly healthy desire for
new experience manifests itself in the most ass-way possible and one morning you realize you’re just a balding douchebag inside trendy jeans and a Corvette. For whatever reason it seems people want to hang onto their youth forever nowadays. “Oh, thirty is the new twenty!” Jesus, really? Well that’s depressing. I like my age. I like that I don’t have to forever experience the turmoil, insecurity and downright goofiness of upper adolescence anymore. I like that I’m boring and un-cool and don’t speak in lingo that a fifteen year old finds comforting. Though, strictly speaking, I was never "cool." I like responsibility...to a point. But what’s wrong with being an adult?Besides, new and amazing and totally-unlike-anything-in-the-world things still happen. The moon landing, for instance, buying your first house, saying “I do,” watching your baby being born, actually believing in a politician. All of these are wholly unique and un-imitatable. It seems they get fewer and farther between the older you get. Is that such a bad thing, though? If they didn’t thin out your poor old psyche could never survive past age 30. But try to imagine—or
better yet, even remember—what it was like going to a county fair for the first time. Sure, they’re routine and some of the shine has come off the apple now, but what if you’d never seen one before? Maybe there’s a two-headed calf in the oddities display! Who knows what could be around the next corner; you don’t know! The sound and presence of the crowds, the burnt sugar smell of cotton candy and a not wholly unpleasant tang of large barnyard animals and hay, the taste of staggeringly sweet root beer in those tiny plastic jugs, the stomach-dropping tickle of a rickety rollercoaster run by people you wouldn’t entirely trust to tend a goldfish. The bizarre, cheap games on the midway that even then you knew were rigged. The sheer, blissful pleasure of being out on a warm summer night, allowed to stay up to the deliriously late hour of ten o’clock, and having all the endless eternity of life stretching out into the horizon ahead of you. Can you hear it? Can you smell it, dear readers?And that’s just a shitty little county fair. Think about your first love, huh? It’s an impossible thing to bottle, that feeling. You can’t keep that sort of shiny new tingle any more than a puppy can keep from growing into a dog. And that’s okay. It’s okay that as we age some of the magic goes out of things. As long as we still remember, and keep ourselves open to it when a pale version of that magic shows up, it’s okay. Because nostalgia is the butterfly version of childhood magic. And that tastes pretty sweet, too. Go ahead, act your age, you’ve earned it.
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