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Thursday, October 04, 2018

40

Mikey looking surprised on the top left.  I'm in the bowtie.
Last year I was scrolling though my Facebook feed and I saw that everyone in the family was wishing my cousin Mikey a happy fortieth birthday.  The posts caught me off guard.  If they ever made a Stranger Things about my life, my cousin Mikey would be the leader of our gang.  In my mind Mikey is still a kid.  How is he forty?  Wait.  If he's forty, that means I'm right behind him.  How the hell did this happen?

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.