The Return of the Happy Birthday

Immediately after you're born, every day is a birthday and it’s fantastic. What a great feeling to celebrate being a day older! Of course, after you have enough days under your belt, you have to graduate to celebrating how many weeks old you are, followed by months, until you finally hit your first actual birthday and turn one year old (although, you’ll still ride the months old train for at least another year). Is there a bigger birthday than turning one? Here you have proof that you've really got a hang of this whole “being a human who continues to exist” racket. Great job, baby! Keep on discovering your toes with reckless abandon.

For the next nine years after that, you find out that every birthday is even bigger and better than the last one. Sure, three was great, but now you're four, which is the greatest age to be until you hit five, which is the absolute coolest thing going under six and so on. This all culminates in your tenth birthday when, like most of the population, you finally require two whole digits to accurately convey your age and you can start throwing words like “decade” around with a little gravity.

Unfortunately, a year later, you hit a much less positive milestone: your first awkward birthday. Eleven is a tricky birthday because you already broke into the double digit club last year, but you've still got another year until you are no longer eligible for the kid's menu. Things get back on track with 12 though because you are the oldest you'll ever be as an official non-teenager. You've got some clout with twelve. You’re not really a kid anymore, but you’re still of the kids, which makes you their emperor and ambassador to the grown ups. You now have the power to ultimately decide what is for kids and what is not. Please don’t abuse this awesome responsibility.

Of course, 13 is the real milestone. That’s the show. You're a teenager now and you get to have FEELINGS that are best discussed in PG-13 movies – a qualification you certainly have met. This also means you can finally hear someone say the word "fuck" (just the once and not in the context of fornication), which you've been covertly practicing in your bedroom and with a select few of your peers for several months now in preparation. Thirteen gives you that sort of feeling that makes you think you are finally cool when nothing could be further from the truth.

Fourteen and 15 are your next awkward birthdays as you don't accomplish anything other than getting a step closer to becoming 16, which we all know is the most important birthday ever (some might say “sweet” even, although I personally wouldn’t) because they will finally let you start operating a motor vehicle despite their better judgment. That is provided you live in a state that respects the sanctity of the 16th birthday, otherwise it’s just another day at the birthday mill and there’s nothing sweet about it.

With 17 you can finally see R and NC-17 rated movies, which is a small victory compared to turning 18 the end-all, be-all of teen birthdays. Welcome to the age of majority. Now you can smoke cigarettes, gamble, and consume pornography which you totally haven’t been doing up until this point. Also, you get to rock the vote, which spoiler alert involves very little rocking, but it’s still important for shaping the face of American democracy and all that.

Unfortunately, turning 18 just makes you realize the one thing that you'll lament with turning 19 and 20: You're simply not 21. You can buy any number of falsified identification forms, but you'll never be able to get so drunk in public that you throw up on the bus worry free (please worry a little though, OK?). That's the magic of 21. You had no idea, but from the moment you were born you were living your whole life just to turn 21. Twenty-one is the pinnacle of human existence… unless, of course, you live in another country that lets kids start drinking at 18 and even then they pretty much look the other way by the time you’re 5, so you can just disregard the last paragraph and any further mentions of being 21.

So, where does that leave turning 22? Nowhere, that's where. Twenty-two is the first time you actually age without purpose. Sure, 25 is the magic number to rent a car and you can't be President of the United States of America until you're 35, but how many people go on to be President? So far just 45 people in the history of America have ever been President (not counting all those phony-baloney Presidents of the Continental Congress. Get real Peyton Randolph!). I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I’m certain that far more people have rented cars than become President and until someone comes up with a "Leader of the Free World" air-freshener smell, it is just not going to be the same.

Your 22nd birthday is just coping with the harsh reality that there are no more milestones. In fact, every subsequent birthday is just a little worse than the last one because it's another step to becoming an old person and you know what happens to old people? They die. All of them. Not a single old person has ever gotten past old. No one even knows what's past old because nobody ever makes it out alive.

However, there's still hope because after all 40 is the new 20, right? Well, why don't we make 41 the new 21? Twenty-one makes it legal for you to drink alcohol, 41 should make it legal for you to use Schedule I narcotics. Now, I’m not one to advocate for drug use, but I think in an appropriately regulated system and in the hands of mature responsible adults who have been alive for 41 years, I think the outcomes would mostly be positive. Plus, after a lifetime of just saying no to drugs, wouldn’t it be nice to finally be able to just say yes?

But why stop there? If 41 is the new 21, then it stands to reason that 38 is the new 18, 36 is the new 16, and 32 is the new 12. Think about it. When you turn 12 you get to leave those paltry kids' meals by the wayside and enjoy the unmitigated delight of a full grown up meal. Well, let's say at 32, you get a brand-new, even-better menu at restaurants. Food that’s more delicious than you ever thought possible. When you turn 16 you get to drive a car, how about when you turn 36 you get to fly a jetpack? When you turn 18 you get to consume pornography, what if at 38, it was Oscar quality pornography complete with stellar directing, acting, writing, and sound editing? Now doesn't turning 30 seem a bit more exciting knowing these cool things await you?

But let's say you're 60. Life's passed you by, eh? Not so! If 40 is the new 20 that means 60 is the new 40, which is already 20, so why not get the same deal? When you turn 52, you don't have to wait for your food anymore. Not only do you get the good stuff you gained access to by turning 32, but your order gets bumped right to the front of the line. Fifty-six? You get a license to drive some sort of hovercraft that drives itself and runs on the jealousy of younger people. And the monumental 58th birthday? You get better odds at the Powerball and Mega Millions. What more could you possibly ask for at age 61? You get a cut of the drug money that the government is pushing on those naïve young 41 year olds.

I could go on for 80 and 100, etc. but honestly, I think I might be out of touch with the desires of today’s octogenarians and centenarians. So, if you are between the ages of 70 and 110, feel free to think up what perks you want and we’ll bundle them all together to ship off to our local congresspeople.

We don’t need to be bummed out by most of our birthdays anymore. We have the power to bring back fun, to bring back the excitement, to bring back the perks. Just because youth is wasted on the young doesn't mean happiness should be.