I am now in my forties…
2 minute read
June 4, 2021, 3:42 PM
This past Sunday, I turned 40. I remember the first time that I heard about someone turning 40. In that case, it was Uncle Johnny, i.e. Mom’s brother, back when I was still in my single digits. That age sounded so old for someone who was in elementary school. It was more than four times the age that I was at the time, and seemed so far off. And now I’m there. Uncle Johnny, meanwhile, is now in his seventies, and he and Aunt Beth are retired and living their best life.
My actual birthday, meanwhile, was pretty quiet, by my choice. At work, it’s in our union contract that we are guaranteed to have our birthday off as a “floating holiday”, but I opted to work on my birthday and take the holiday the next day in order to have a three-day weekend. This was also a bit of a weird birthday, because I definitely had a mental hang-up about turning 40. I watched all of my classmates from high school post about turning 40 on Facebook, and I couldn’t help but think that it felt wrong for all of these young people that I went to school with to be turning 40. I didn’t really want to turn 40, because 40 felt old. You weren’t “young” anymore, but instead were “middle aged”. Funny thing, though, is that I have one friend who acted like his life was practically over when he turned 40 a few years ago, and I had to reassure him that it wasn’t the case, and here I was having a hang-up myself over “40 is old”. The morning of my birthday, I woke up, thought to myself, I’m 40!, mentally groaned for a moment, and then rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour.
But then after I got to work, I got to thinking (operating the train gives you lots of time to think), and I realized that I was 40, but I didn’t feel any different than I did the day before, when I was still 39. I soon came to realize that it was going to be okay. I didn’t feel old. I felt just as good as ever. Sure, I have a few lines where there were no lines before, and a lot of things sag now (mainly from the weight loss), and I have to hold things a little bit further away from my face in order to read them than I used to, but all in all, I’m doing pretty well. But don’t get me wrong – I still hate birthday greetings.
So now that I’m in my forties, here’s to another decade of adventures, I suppose.