The old grey stallion ain't what he used to be.

      The fact that my birthday and my youngest son's birthday are only four days apart gives me a little perspective on the whole birthday "thing". Our birthdays just passed this week and our attitudes about them could not have been more different.
      To start with how we calculate our age is very different. My son is leaving the stage where you calculate age in fractions and entering the stage where you just skip to the next number entirely. I always thought the fraction stage was good for the math skills. "I'm 6 and a half, I'm 7 and three quarters, I'm 8 and 72/156th I'm 9 4/23 to the third power divided by pi". At some point I'm sure my son's age calculations were based in string theory.
       The next stage is jumping to the next age, skipping months of his life entirely.
"I'm eleven years old." 
"No your not."
"Well, almost"
"No, you turned 10 last Saturday."
      At some point you hit the stage when your happy with the age you are, this seems to be particularly true when you're 21.
      This is followed in turn by the time in your life when you are a certain age till the last possible second.
"so you're 28 now?"
"No! I'm 27!"
"Isn't today your birthday?"
"yes but I Wasn't born until 7:06 pm, Don't make me older than I am."
      Quickly following that is the stage where you nearly stop aging entirely and spend at least 5 years at 29 years old, and another 5 years at 39.
      Finally you get to the point where you stop caring and realize you've earned all those years and are comfortable with it. Unfortunately this doesn't last long enough because the next stage is the one where you can't remember how old you are and don't really care, and dammit I told you kids to get the hell off of my lawn.
      How you perceive aging on your birthday is hardly the most significant difference as you get older though, how you celebrate your special day changes drastically through the years for most of us.
       It starts with the family fawning over you as yo go through the toddler years until they get bored and just start sending cards and excuses, followed by the childhood birthdays with super heroes and the latest Disney "thing" decorating your house and the crash, bang, boom of sugar-high ten years old's wrecking your house. Which is by the way MUCH different from your twenties when the crash, bang, boom is booze addled numb-skulls wrecking your house.
      Our little one was overjoyed at the Spider-man and Iron Man decorations, having friends over, getting some cake and ice cream and of course the presents. I'm still confused about the whole giving presents thing though. Why do you get presents just because you were born? Shouldn't you give the presents to your parents as a gift for bringing you into the world? That just makes more sense to me but whatever.
       My birthday only a few days later was much different, I spent it shoe shopping for my son while coughing up a lung from a cold that won't leave and stressing about having to go in for an MRI the following morning. The previous year I spent my birthday in a high school office listening to an over protective, over involved, psycho parent make my son miserable, and the year before that I spent at home dealing with the effects of have my car totaled by a drunk driver. Not the best record lately and definitely different from the birthday that came after my own childhood Spider-man birthdays.
       After the kiddie parties come the coming of age, boy/girl parties that involve awkward conversation and spin the bottle games. My 14th birthday involved an epic food fight that had me scrubbing walls the entire next day. (Thanks again for that Mike G where ever you are, I was picking peperoni and cake out of various places for days).
      Into the twenties come the aforementioned drunken bashes that involve random hook-ups, girls who can't hold their liquor or find some articles of clothing and people who pass out...everywhere, in a related note I would like to sincerely apologize to the Rochester fire department as well as the neighbors across the street who just gave up and moved.
      If my older son is reading this, umm no I'm not talking about me, my friends and I had civilized gatherings involving tea and cookies and in depth discussions of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. There was not copious amounts of alcohol, sex, strippers or firemen  If any of my friends are reading this SHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
       When you get a little older and settle down the celebrations usually do as well. They go to smaller gatherings, then just you and the wife and extra special bonus birthday sex, and then its the wife and kids with those great home made cards.
      Finally it seems that birthdays become a reminder to call your doctor for another test that needs to be scheduled. That is of course unless you can make it to your 100th, then someone will remember to throw a party for you again. Of course those are similar to the infant parties you started out with, condescending relatives, no teeth to eat your cake with, and needing a diaper change and a nap half way through...I'm looking forward to it.

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