Week In Brief: I Turned 21

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I spent almost my entire nineteenth birthday in the bathtub experiencing the First Great Meltdown of my adultish life. I’ve selectively forgotten what that was all about, but I need not invent any metaphors to illustrate the fact that I was soaking in lukewarm meta-pity. After such a raging anti-birthday, the following year I overcompensated; I treated it like a 24-hour hot potato threatening to explode into another steam cloud of existential ache and gloom. I singularly containerized the anxiety of a strained couple trying to make it through a family vacation. I don’t know how it got to be so agonizing to turn a year older.

Luckily my twentieth birthday didn’t establish the bathtub crisis to be a pattern. I made a point to spend the day doggy paddling in average-ness, if for no other reason than to take the edge off the expectation that we have birthday expectations. At the time I was an intern and I went about the day pretty obediently, puttering around sterile cubicles and handling the sort of tasks that leaves about seventy percent of your brain free to amble. I happily allowed the busy-work to serve a private adjunct purpose during the day — as it were, just having minor responsibilities sealed the lid on my annual tub o’ sorrow.

And so brings us to this birthday, my twenty-first. After a smooth twentieth, I grew suspicious that the pattern was in fact biennial and some sad stinky shit would descend upon me this time around. So I chose to go to work on a day of the week I normally don’t just to pass the hours a little less self-consciously. Then I spent the night with three good friends, let some fancy margaritas kick my ass a little, motorboated a taco and called it a birthday. The scales tipped more in favor of warm and fuzzy than wild and crazy. I feel a little guilty for not barfing on something I’d paid for.

Besides being chicken-fried dickheads, people who say “You only turn 21 once!” almost had me thinking I’d betrayed myself by behaving sort of tamely the one night I’m not supposed to. Then I remember how many friends’ 21st birthdays I’ve celebrated already, a school year’s worth at least. One difference, I guess, is that I can shelve the practical bouncer-dodging skills I’ve honed over the last 3-4 years and settle comfortably into being a legal turd, opening turd-blaster fire on younger generations for their meager knowledge of ’90s family sitcoms.

It’s eery though, this is the first time in my life where the most newly recycled fashion trends are ones I’ve already lived through (little floral prints, acid washed denim, leggings, crop tops?) and shows syndicated on Nick at Nite are ones I watched on their original air dates, so help me God (oh, and I just ordered a pair of orthopedic shoes from a comfort footwear supplier because I thought they were cute, actually cute. And wearing all these LifeAlert devices around my neck and wrists is making me look like a crazy marionette in my own home.)

But mostly this birthday has reminded me of the experience of thinking there’s one more stair to go when you’ve already reached the porch, a gawky little step forward whose impact is at once shocking and pretty easily dismissed. And so I conclude this on a “bleh” and try not to think about how much ridiculous needless apprehension I’ll subject myself to next year.