I'm Not Scared

Should I be worried about turning 40?

I'm not.

Thirty scared the crap out of me. Thirty was horrifying.

I felt like I was tied to youth at my back with a faded baby pink satin ribbon, then felt the ribbon unravel almost to the end so I turned around to hold on but it slid through my fingers anyway.

Couldn't get traction.

That was so dumb.

My birthday came and went and I was the same person the next day.

I think that's why 40 doesn't scare or upset me at all.

I don't change.

Yes, there are physical changes. None that I'm willing to admit to, but I'll concede they happen ...to other people.

I think that's what upsets people about aging. It's fear of not being yourself anymore. Of becoming some unfamiliar, random old person.

When I'm 80, I'll still be Real World Yogi, and blogging about it.

Maybe by then I'll have figured out how to upload photos to go with my posts.

Maybe I'll take a new picture every 10 years of me sitting in Starbucks and I'll remember the first version I took the day I had my endometrial biopsy and shared the experience with all of you.

What will Starbucks be like in 40 years?

Will I be living in Howell in 40 years?

In my condo?

With the same neighbor who smokes and sits on the stairs all day and flicks her ashes everywhere except - what a crazy idea - an ashtray?

Maybe by then I'll have the nerve to say something about it.

I refuse to start hating my birthday or pretending they don't happen to me or not wanting to celebrate or to hesitate to tell people my age.

That just makes people assume you're older than they thought you were. The thinking is, you must be really old if you're so old you don't want to say how old you are.

I was born in 1970, fortuitous for me, because I'm awful with math and it always made it easy to figure out how old I'd be certain years.

If someone asked how old I'd be in 2000, it was easy - 30!

The only bad thing about my birthday is that it's toward the end of the year, so really, in 2000 I was 29 for nine months and 30 for only three.

But, whatevs.

When I was a kid and thought 30 was pretty old, I thought to myself, I'm sure I'll have it all figured out by then.

What I figured out, the day after I turned 30, is that it doesn't matter if we figure things out. Once something gets figured out, the next puzzle comes along.

It's usually the same puzzle in a new outfit and seems trickier than the last, but really it isn't.

I always thought there was something special about my birthday, beyond the regular, it's my birthday type of thing, because of the numbers.

It's 09/17/1970. See what I mean? The numbers in the day and month are the same as in the year.

I'm fond of pointing this out to people and waiting for their amazed response at how special my numbers are. Haven't gotten that amazed response yet. Mostly they're amazed I think it's amazing.

Everyone's figured out something amazing about their numbers. We all think our numbers are special. And they are. Because they make us who we are somehow. They say something about us.

My numbers are angular. I can't explain it. They have angles and texture, they're not smooth. Like someone threw pebbles on a freshly paved road.

I don't want fresh pavement. I want something to grab onto. Smooth roads are slippery and worrisome. In algebra with all those formulas all I could think of was texture on pavement.

I fared much better in geometry.

In less than a month I'll be 40.

I have everything to look forward to.