I'm the one of the youngest out of my school year group so I've always had ample time to get used to the idea of my next birthday swinging around. My friend Vicki and I bookended the rest of our friends so long before I turned sixteen or twenty-one or whatever milestone it was, I would have already celebrated that number a dozen or so times. This is even more true now that I'm 'friends' with a ton of people from my high school who I was never actually friends with in the first place.
For all of us this year is that of the big 3-0 and my friends have been turning thirty since the beginning of last September. I have had months to prepare for those looming two digits of my own, that add up to so little and yet so much, and up until about two weeks ago I was completely at ease with it. "I'm actually looking forward to turning thirty" I would boast, giving myself props for being so cool. Then I saw a Facebook posting from a high school classmate stating, with a sad face emoticon, that she had just 29 days of being 29 left. I found that kind of clever and decided that I would make a note of the first of the last 29 days of my 29th year, only to discover that I was older than the girl in question by exactly a week, and that I was in fact already within the last three weeks of my 29th year. Oh the humanity. My smugness dissipated in a flash, replaced with the tiniest knot of fear nestling itself just above my belly button.
I am now approaching the last week of my twenties and I'm doing a pretty good job of smothering the voice of that little knot by alternately earnestly ignoring it, and drowning it out with wine. It's a sneaky little bastard though because it doesn't just come out and say "hey loser, what have you got to show for your thirty years?" It poses such barbed little questions as,
"Hmm...is this where you imagined you would be by the time you're thirty? What? I'm just asking."
"Didn't you imagine that you might be married with children by now? You know, like most of your high school friends are - aww don't they look happy?"
"So...you're going to be a thirty year old administrative assistant, have I got that right?"
"I don't know about you, but I always expected that you'd be a successful lawyer or something by now. I suppose it's OK though."
I've never even wanted to be a lawyer but that title is a clear marker on the barometer of how successful you are, right? Lawyer would be at about 85°F with thirty-year-old Administrative Assistant hovering around the twenty-five degree mark. Damn, where's that bottle of wine? I did think about not anesthetizing myself with a bottle of Shiraz and instead trying to do some of those ‘things to do before you’re thirty.’ That was until my Googling for such activities turned up this list. If aspiring to this level of moronity is how one is supposed to spend the last few days of their twenties I would rather stick with the WineV and just wake up in my next decade. See you in nine days. *Glug*
From Blinman.com
1. Have a really stupid accident which necessitates a hospital visit
2. Shoot something
3. Take a weekend break more than 1000 miles from home
4. Boot Linux on your home PC
5. Get lost in a country where you don't speak the language
6. Spend more than your monthly income on a pocket sized gadget
7. Post bail for a friend
8. Break a really large plate glass window
9. Make a parachute jump on a hangover
10. Use a whole roll of gaffa tape in one day
11. Make a pointless modification to your house
12. Neck a pint of peppermint oil
13. Pull a shemale by mistake (but realise in time...)
14. Buy a samurai sword
15. Delay paying a bill until the summons arrives
16. Destroy a speed camera
17. Refill an inkjet cartridge
18. Say something obscene on national television
19. Do a J turn in order to beat somebody to a parking space
20. Break a sledgehammer
21. Make a bomb
22. Smash a CRT
23. Require medical treatment as a consequence of kinky sex gone wrong (STDs don't count.)
24. Tip a waiter with something other than money
25. Light a fire with petrol
26. Kidnap someone
27. Park inside a motorway service station
28. Own a convertible.
29. Live abroad.
30. Drive at more than 140mph.
31. Get something for free through a masterpiece of complaining
32. Give yourself a mains electric shock.
33. Completely dismantle an object larger than yourself
34. Write off a car
35. Fall asleep and get really hilarious sunburn
36. Get drunk on Absinthe
37. Stay up all night listening to a girl have an emotional crisis
38. Lick the terminals of a 9 volt battery
39. Take part in motorsport
40. Stay at the office for more than 24 hours
41. Set off a fire extinguisher
42. Drive at least 600 miles in a day on two lane roads
43. Hotwire a car
44. Watch all the Monty Python films In one sitting
45. Shag an ex-girlfriend by mistake
46. Dial 999
47. Commit a faux pas which means that a friend will never speak to you again
48. Make a bet you couldn't afford to lose
49. Read a 500 page book in one sitting
50. Escape a perfectly justified parking ticket.
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