Did you know that “35” is a milestone? (Did you know that my family has been living with a girl who has declared each birthday a milestone since she was roughly 4?)
This is my first birthday without my Dad. And, I’m not gonna lie, it feels very strange. But birthdays are proof that the whole “aging and living” things works, and to do anything other than celebrate the passage of time seems entirely against the point, if not slightly offensive to the memory of my father.
So, 35 is a milestone. One I’m hitting on Saturday like a rogue mole in Mario Kart’s Moo Moo Meadows. With hopefully the same soundtrack, but perhaps slightly better scores.
P.J. has informed me that he’s never dated a 35 year-old. (Which would’ve been a neat trick, since I’ve known him he was 22 and a ninja move like dating a woman in exactly her mid-thirties while co-raising three people under 6 with a- to the best of my knowledge- full-time wife requires more sleep than I’ve ever read about.) That said, the girl who P.J. Boychild fell in love with- while fun, crazy, and possessing a physique that I would, at this moment, quite possibly strangle a passerby for- didn’t even know the stuff she didn’t even know. (For starters, the self-confidence to acknowledge that the body she existed in was one that- waaaay down the road- she’d publicly offer to strangle a passerby for.)
Child.
This knowledge inspired me to write a list. (She and I have both always loved lists.) So here it is:
21 Things “35 Me” Knows That “25 Me” Didn’t
- Your love of placing random numbers into lists will grow stronger and stronger each year. Embrace it.
- It’s a wonderful thing to ask for- and accept- help. It doesn’t mean you’re a failed adult, it just means you’re a fallible mortal who has yet to conquer time, space, gravity, and traffic.
- People want to help. It makes them feel good to place your feet back on the ground and your head somewhere back above your shoulders.
- Anyone who doesn’t like your baby name selection, current song list, or the fact that you wear your hair in bangs probably won’t end up using or doing any of those three things. So since it affects them so little, their preferences really shouldn’t even blip on your Radar of Care.
- The best way to silence folks who continue to define themselves by their alma maters is to sing a rousing chorus of “Glory Days.”
- You can make do with a heck of lot less money and stuff you’d think, Keely.
- (I’m not kidding, 25 year-old Keely. So much of what you’re carting around under the vestige of “heirloom” is actually just “dead weight.”)
- With God as my witness, you will never be a 3 a.m. cocktail waitress ever again. (And you’re not gonna believe what you get to do instead.)
- You don’t have to eat potatoes if you don’t want to.
- If you find a person who has seen you Ugly Cry, held your hair back during bouts with food poisoning or hangovers, stood his ground while you were at your raging worst, spooned you even though it’s just so hot in here, and apologized first? You need to marry him. You need to marry the hell out of him.
- Apologizing first is a foreign, stunning, effective way to blow the mind of a significant other. File that one away.
- Stop it with the gaucho pants.
- That “to-do” list you mentally, impossibly shove up in the grill of each day? You will nevereverever come to the end of it before bedtime. (I mean, you put things such as “figure out seasonal storage” on there. What are you even supposed to DO with that?) Just, like, live your life. (And work on the seasonal storage once you set up slightly more concrete plans of attack.)
- You adore being a nanny. But being a mother is going to explode your heart.
- I was going to put something in here about calling your Dad more. But do you know what, past-Me and current-Me? You called him enough. You loved him enough. (You still do.)
- You are not a waif. You will never be “leggy.” But 98% of the people with whom you spend the days and weeks that add up to a lifetime aren’t actively judging you on your body type. And the few who are? Unless you want to sleep with them (you don’t), this should also be filed away under that whole Radar of Care thing. (Unless it’s a talent agent who wants to offer you a wacky spinoff pilot. Then maybe, I don’t know, do the South Beach thing for a few weeks.)
- Related: P.J. will find you crazy-attractive in even the saddest of outfits. Remember this, respect this, and shave your legs occasionally for the poor guy.
- At some point- and it’s coming, I swear it is- you’ll realize that self-confidence zipped up in a hoodie is lightyears more attractive than neediness wrapped in a miniskirt. (…But can we take a sec to pour one out for the miniskirts? Sigh.)
- Just read the trashy romance or dime-store mystery on the train. Don’t hide it behind your bag. Embrace your choice of enjoying zippy plot lines and neatly tied-up endings in the language of your birth without feeling the need to reference your academic pedigree. (…Glory daaaays.)
- You will be so, so happy with how your choices played out.
- And you’re not nearly as smart as you’re gonna be at 45.
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