In less than a week, I reach the biggest birthday milestone since turning 25. The big 3-0. Entering decade four. I’m no longer able to say I’m going through my quarter-life crisis. It’s now the one-third life crisis.
Actually, it’s not all that bad. I fretted about it two years ago, but now, it seems like any other approaching birthday. Maybe this is because I have plenty of friends who are older and enough that are younger (who don’t think it’s so uncool to hang with a 30-something).
I never really had any grand vision for what my life would be like at 30. I never envisioned or cared much about owning my own place, although it’s now something I think more about. I still don’t quite know what I want to be when I grow up, but i seem to be slowly cementing my path in communications of some type. Is it too late to be a marine biologist or an urban redevelopment planner?
But instead of future tripping and thinking of all I haven’t done, let’s recap some great and favorite birthday moments. I’ll preface by saying most of my childhood birthdays were fun. As a little girl, my family let me alternate having parties with taking friends out to dinner. Even school-grade years were birthdays. Odd years were dinnners.
- Kindergarten (age 6) – McDonald’s. Paper party hats, cake and the indoor carousel – standard-issue kids’ party.
- Grade 1 (age 7) – Dinner at Red Bull Inn with Kelly Brinker. I wore a pink frilly dress. Aw yeah.
- Grade 2 (age 8 ) – Party at Major Magic’s (like a Chuck e Cheese). So happy because Tim Henry, my second grade crush, came. He gave me barettes that his mom crocheted. Tim did not actually like me though. I got over it.
- Grade 3 (age 9) – Dinner at Ground Round with Kelly. Kids paid what they weigh! My meal cost 78 cents.
- Grade 4 (age 10) – My first all-girls slumber party. I was the last to fall asleep. The next morning, we had off school (first day of deer hunting season is a school holiday in Pennsylvania) so we all decorated my family’s Christmas tree. Wow. We were dorks.
- Grade 5 (age 11) – Dinner at Red Lobster with Kelly and Kristen Hollis. I was allowed to bring a second friend this time. And yes, Red Lobster is a classy place.
- Grade 6 (age 12) – I have no idea. I guess I stopped having parties.
- Grade 7 – 10 – I must’ve blocked out the middle school/early school years because I have no memories of what I did.
- Grade 11 (age 17) – Now, this one I remember. I can do a whole post on my 17th birthday, a surprise all-night bowling party. Perhaps I’ll save that story for tomorrow. My friends tricked me into going to a bowling alley, and we partied all night with pop and pizza and bowling.
- Age 18 – A small gathering at my house. We hit a pinata in my backyard. It was a last-minute thing.
- Age 19 – College freshman year. Soon-to-be boyfriend took me to dinner for pizza at Carmen’s, the best Chicago-style pizza in Evanston. I think it was the first time a guy paid for me for dinner. Looking back on it, I guess it was a date.
- Age 20- Boyfriend organized a surprise party in his suite. Best gift was opening a bottle of champagne and sharing with everyone there.
- Age 21 – Went to lunch with a group of friends, all underage. So I ordered Stir Fire Grill’s version of a mai tai and then stealthily passed it around. Yes, I was proudly carded. I had a final until 9 that night, so the later celebration consisted of simply having a few snakebites at Tommy Nevin’s Irish Pub with a few sorority sisters.
- Age 22-28 were nothing exciting. Dinner or drinks with some friends or working all day and too tired to do anything.
- Age 29 – FUN. I organized a bar crawl through Georgetown. At each bar, I got to make a birthday wish, things like my party starting a conga line or someone finding me a boy from Pittsburgh to buy me a shot. Really, it was a super fun birthday. Probably should’ve been saved for the 30th. But definitely a fitting last year of the 20s.
This year, I’m being taken out to dinner somwhere in Bethesda but I have no idea where. I’m not being told. Then I’m going dancing with the boy. I’m a little nervous because I don’t like not having control of things like this. I want the occassion to be on the list of birthdays I remember 20 years from now, not the ones that I can’t remember, like ages 13-16. The boy insists this wil be one to remember. And he’s a pretty good planner of fun times, so I trust him. But as one who inherited the unnecessary worry wart gene, I can’t help but fret just a little.
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