Time is a very weird thing.
There are moments when I feel like I’ve been doing something for twenty minutes or so and it turns out I’ve been there for a few hours (T will vehemently disagree, but our son’s birth was sort of like this for me). And then there are other points when it seems like the second hand literally could not be moving any slower if it wanted to (“The flight is how long???”). Time flies or it drags on, but the point is that it’s always moving.
Yes, today is my birthday. Yes, I’m now 30. But no, I don’t really feel that weird about it.
Yes, people who are 30 are adults. Real adults, with families and jobs and retirement accounts. Adults talk about how they don’t like today’s music, how kids don’t respect their elders and how their joints are sore. Adults read the actual news instead of flipping straight to the comics or the sports sections. Adults talk about how things were so much better in their day.
You know what? I do most of those things too. I don’t like most of today’s music. I did a little running last weekend (read: sprinted down 34th street from Herald Square to Penn Station to catch a train) and my legs are still kind of sore. I have a wife, a son, a job and a retirement account. I think the cartoons that kids watch today don’t hold a candle to the ones that were on when I was younger. Yes, I still read the comics and the sports section first, but I generally at least skim the real news afterwards. The truth is, I’m pretty much an adult myself, so I might as well accept it.
Plus, being an adult isn’t that bad. I get more out of movies now. I enjoy my vacations more. I can appreciate what it means to just sit and watch a sports game (I don’t have the time to do it, but I can appreciate it). I can understand and treasure the importance of my relationships with my wife and my family. I can watch my son grow from folds of skin and a mop of hair to pushing his toys around the living room and clapping out of self-satisfaction when he’s moved all the obstacles out of his way (speaking of time moving too quickly…). I can do things now that I couldn’t before and I know enough now not to do things I was doing before. Being an adult is just the next step that I’ve reached and it certainly won’t be the last.
And it could be worse – at least I’m not 40.
