Mikey looking surprised on the top left. I'm in the bowtie. |
I remember turning ten. Hitting double digits was a pretty big deal. My mom gave me a Nintendo Entertainment System that year. It came with two controllers, the Zapper, and the Power Pad. The game cartridge had three games on it: Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, and Track and Field. As a fifth grader my interests were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, baseball, collecting baseball cards, and collecting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
I remember turning thirteen. We lived in London that year and I was in the eighth form at Highgate Wood School. We'd only been in England for about a month and I didn't know a lot of the kids at school yet, so we celebrated as a small family in our flat. Mom gave me a birthday card with thirteen one-pound coins taped to the inside in the shape of a 13.
I turned fourteen in Massachusetts and fifteen in Florida. I turned eighteen as a freshman at the University of Richmond and remember eating chocolate cake. I turned twenty-one my senior year and went out for teppanyaki with friends.
At twenty five I was finishing up my degree at Rollins College and also a waiter at the Cheesecake Factory in Orlando. My car insurance dropped by half. I also started blogging that year, a habit I've (mostly) kept up ever since. It was also the year I started working in environmental politics, science communication, or whatever it is I've been doing for a living all these years.
I turned thirty in Saipan while we were in the heat of trying to convince President George W. Bush to create the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument. I celebrated with friends at Godfather's Bar. That is the year I met and started dating Edz.
In my 30s I left the island and found moderate success in my career. I married the girl from the island. My car is paid off, but I have a mortgage. Ten years went by faster than I imagined it could. 29 seems like only yesterday.
And tomorrow I join Mikey as a member of the over forty club.
This is what four decades of grilled pork and cheeseburgers followed by two months of light jogging and a day at the beach gets you pic.twitter.com/tnSa54Up0Y— Angelo Villagomez (@TaotaoTasi) September 3, 2018