Welcome to Club 38!
As a little girl, I couldn’t wait until “my day” returned. You know, it took an entire year, but those 364 days were worth the wait. After all, when you’re a kid, just to say it’s your birthday is a big deal. Then there’s the big 1-0. Hitting double digits was important. I was just three years away from being a teenager. Yeah, that would be the life. At the time, those years crawled by like the caterpillar crawling around the leaves in a large tree. Finally, I reached 13 years of age and felt like a butterfly and, boy, did I think I was ready to fly. However, my wings were clipped early and I realized the teen years were going to be agonizing.
For five years, which seemed like an eternity back then (but now, I think it just flew by), I waited until my emancipation at age 18. Finally the day arrived like the rising of the sun over the Atlantic. But for me, the novelty wore off quick and reality set in, and I began to realize all these numbers I couldn’t wait to reach were just that—numbers. I was wishing my life away, waiting and waiting to reach a magical number. That was the moment I really didn’t care what number I was.
I’ve learned to live with this philosophy for years. In fact, many times when someone asks me how old I am or when we’re talking about a particular year and I think about what my age was back then, I have to stop and remember the year I was born and do the math. Yes, I still have to do that. After all, I’ve got enough to worry about. One more number to remember is just too much. Useless information like that, I don’t need clogging up my brain cells.
While I’m not reaching any age milestone this year, yeah, I did the math and so has my son, there really isn’t any magical years. I’ve come to the realization that age is definitely just a number and Club 38 is an exclusive group that I have membership in for only 365 days. I have a choice to make my membership worthwhile.
I’ve been dreading this for, well almost a year. How silly is that? It’s not like I can do anything about it. I’m not able to cancel my membership. So I need to pay my dues and make a choice. I can be a card-carrying member and try to hide my card or I can embrace it and make it worthwhile. I’m not saying that I will flaunt my membership. (I’m not that excited about Club 38!), but I don’t intend to waste a single day. After all, I’ve got my dues paid up. Here’s to Club 38. Cheers!