Thoughts About Birthdays On My 39th

Today is a Thursday and today I am 39 years old.

I’ve never been one to put a lot of importance or significance on birthdays. I’m a husband, a daddy, a working stiff and a regular guy who has a regular job which means that when my birthday falls on a weekday I still have to go to change the cat litter, go to work and pick up the kids from daycare. That’s okay with me, because I generally enjoy doing all that, especially the cat litter.

A birthday present to myself.

Adult birthdays are not nearly the same affairs as kid birthdays. When you’re a kid you get to eat lots of cake and ice cream, run around like a maniac on a wild sugar high and basically get away with acting like the ego-driven dictator of a small country that has a ton of natural resources. Everything is about you, you, you. When you’re an adult you really don’t need an excuse to drink too much, eat too much, or stage a revolution and then enslave your people, clean out the government’s coffers and set yourself up as a demigod until the next revolution comes along.

Being a regular guy also means I probably won’t have a big party with lots of A-List celebrities where we rent out a hot Hollywood club for the night. I probably will not jet off to Paris for a quick dinner or start my cruise around the world today. I will almost definitely continue working on the grout in my bathroom remodeling project and I’ll secretly long for the day when the room finally has a toilet again.

Some people dread birthdays as a sign that they are getting older. I personally rather enjoy getting older. Sure, the time goes by too fast, especially now that I have kids of my own, but as you grow older you the advantage of wisdom to guide your decisions, the maturity to pick less fights and the disposition that allows you to shake your fist in the air and holler at the kids to get off your lawn.

I see birthdays as a small reminder that I’m not actually dead. If I’m celebrating a birthday that means I’ve been fortunate enough to not die from some strange jungle disease, astute enough to not fall into a running wood chipper and I somehow survived adolescents, which is reason enough to celebrate. We should all take a certain amount of satisfaction in having a birthday to celebrate.

Each birthday commemorates the fact that you’ve spent another year doing all the things you normally do like standing in line for a hot dog, sitting on the toilet in your old bathroom before you decided to remodel it or spending time with your family. When your birthday rolls around you can sit back and think about all the things you accomplished in the past year like starting to use the word “holler” or you can set out your goals for your next trip around the sun, like getting that damn toilet installed.

Either way, your age is just another number in your life. I’m 39 and I’m okay with that.

I mean, it’s not like I’m 40!