I love my mother, and also her most consistent skill is to disappoint me on my birthday. This year is no exception.
This year, she disappointed me because I was today years old when I discovered the Integrated Taxonomic Information System exists:
I learned this from refdesk.com. Not from my mother. *Who is a botanist.*
She says "I thought everyone knew about ITIS." Mother. Mom. Momther. Are you serious right now. Mom. What. Why. Mother. Seriously.
(I am only half joking. She is aces at disappointing me on my birthday, usually by giving me gifts that are things she wants, not things I want. My discovery of ITIS is mild and funny by comparison.)
Props to Gremlin, though, who brought me a full set of signed Dungeon Crawler Carl books from a show he did a few months ago at which Matt Dinniman was signing. I am thrilled. I'm equally amused by the box: he repurposed a gourmet dog food shipping box into a mimic (boldly labeled "NOT A MIMIC"), complete with creepy googly eyes and pointy teeth. Gremlin knows me.
I work with teens, so of course they are convinced that 20 is old and 40 is dead. No amount of protest on my part will convince them that one's 40s (at least, my 40s) are so far my favorite decade. So I will not try. I'll just go on living in my favorite decade of life so far.
(N.b. not my favorite decade of human history, by a long shot.)
One thing I have noticed as my friends and I age, though: Growing - physically, mentally, emotionally - is pretty much inevitable for the first 30 years or so. You don't have to DO anything; it just happens. (My students would probably prefer it did not happen so fast - they wake up in different bodies nearly every day.)
This trajectory flattens out in our 30s, though. By the late 30s/early 40s, it's no longer guaranteed. This is the age at which further growth is a conscious choice. We have to consciously, intentionally choose TO grow, or we coast for a while and then decline. In every sense.
My fitness tracker says I'm 37. I have no idea how it decides that. But if Death wants me, he's gonna have to catch me first.
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