Email chain twixt Scarlett and myself about our then-impending birthdays, but two days apart.  I’m 25 today, a full quarter century.  Many happy returns/Condolences!

Scarlett:
So PLEASE tell me I am not the only one freaking out here about our impending birthdays.  25 is PETRIFYING.  the last hallmark before “Qualifies for Senior Discounts”.  The end of the “18-24” check-box.  The end of pretending you’re sort of maybe still a “young adult” and can justify things like hitchhiking and trespassing and running around on roofs and switching jobs every six months because you’re still kind of college-aged and therefore still kind of post-adolescent and therefore still kind of justifiably enjoying your youth.  25 is “No More Excuses For Not Having Your Merde Together”-Land.  It’s doom and destruction and HOLY LORD I AM HALFWAY TO FIFTY and I Am Actually An Adult And Need To Start Behaving As Such.  It’s like AGH HOW AM I NOT PUBLISHED YET AND WHERE HAS MY LIFE GONE AND I HAVE BEEN FREAKING OUT ABOUT GETTING OLD SINCE I WAS ABOUT TO TURN *FOURTEEN*, SO THIS IS DIRE!  And knowing that for every year after this I’ll be begging the fates to be “only” 25 again.

Oh the problems that come with living in America.  Such a tragic and difficult life I lead, with so many real and legitimate problems!

Enjoy your last days of youth…

C.:
Sorry, beloved, I did this particular freak out when I got married at AGE TWENTY-THREE and WHAT AM I THINKING?!  I have to be a Real Live Grown Up now, what the hell – what do you MEAN a 401k plan?!  However, to be fair, the “AUGH HOW AM I NOT PUBLISHED YET AND WHERE HAS MY LIFE GONE” I can totally relate to.  I think I’ve just decided to (in public) age gracefully and act as childish as possible in private.  So far it has served me well.  I don’t mind going to a new age grouping as I suspect that I shall never have my merde together, no matter what age I am.

Scarlett:
I laugh at myself on this point as well.  It’s odd because part of me relaly doesn’t care, in terms of how society-at-large tends to freak out about aging…it’s just the not-published/waste-of-life thing that freaks me out!  I seriously remember (as I’m sure you recall as well) running around school like a crazed person on my 14th birthday.  Having spent my childhood DESPERATE to be 13 because TEENAGERS WERE SO COOL, I was completely unable to deal with being 14 because it sounded “too old to be a child prodigy” and I hadn’t written a symphony or been published yet.  Oh, 8th-grade Scarlett, if only you knew how LITTLE you would actually accomplish OVER THE NEXT 11 YEARS.

C.:
I remember dying to be a teenage and then realizing it didn’t feel too different from being a pre-teen.  My aging angst died at that moment.  I realized that some people spend their lives racing to be a certain point and they dedicating the rest of their lives to staying at that point, and it frankly seemed more than a little ridiculous.  Ah, pseudo maturity!  How I shall abandon thee when the wrinkles come!