If There'd Been Cake, the Fire Department Would have Come, Engines Blaring Horns!
filed on Wednesday, September 17, 2003 at 8:14:00 PM CST

Ah, it finally happened to me.  The "Big Three Oh."  September 14, 2003 at 6:07am, I'd officially been alive and breathing for thirty years on the face of this little ball of water and rock called Earth.  Imagine that... and I don't even feel a day over 29 years, 367 days old.

It's an odd feeling reflecting on my thirtieth birthday.  To be honest, I had absolutely no problem with the idea of turning twenty-ten (though I'm already starting to get a bit on about turning 31, but that's not for another 362 days, so I'll not worry about it yet).  It's more of looking back at everything behind me and wondering, "Where the heck have the years gone."

It doesn't seem like fifteen years ago that I was celebrating my fifteenth birthday, but, of course, it was.  What was it I was thinking at fifteen?  It was the start of my Sophomore year of high-school.  Driver's Ed would be coming up soon, and then I could get my license.  But the end of high school still seemed so far away.  I was playing Dungeons & Dragons with Fred Cook out in Joliet, having my mom drop me off on Saturday night, and either she would pick me up or Fred would drive me home.  It would be another full year before D&D would be a weekly thing, but it would happen.

And see, that's where I get stuck looking back over thirty years of life.

I miss my dad (my sister's dad, but the only one who treated me as a son).  I know he knew how much he meant to me, but so often I think to myself I didn't take enough interest in all of the things he knew.  Electronics, automotive... at least I took on his love of woodworking (and someday I hope to have a woodshop that would make him proud).  Whenever I think of him, I invariably think about my mother and my sister, both of whom I don't talk to much (in fact, I haven't spoken to my sister since her father passed away).  And that leads me to thinking about how little I've seen my younger brother and sister, and how I really never want to see my biological father again, though I'd love to see him just once more to argue about me being gay.

I think of how little time my grandparents probably have left on this earth... it's down to a matter of a couple of decades at most, though I think I'd be lucky if it were that long -- and how I never seem to make enough time to go visit them.  I think of how I never got to say goodbye to my Aunt Edie, and how I've not seen my cousins in years, and how Tony, my first-cousin once removed (or however that stuff works) has got to be going on somewhere between 12 and 15 himself.

There are a lot of things in my past that I've found popping up in my mind lately.

And then I think of how much fun I've had over the years too.  After all, how many people can say, "I held a science fiction convention?"  How many people get to work security at a convention and meet many stars on a different level than just saying, "Hello, could you sign this, To your favorite fan?'"  Who takes it upon themselves to create a Star Trek fan magazine, and then gets it reviewed in Replay Magazine?  How many people have only seen a picture of the Grand Canyon or the Hoover Dam or the Bahamas?

I've done a great many things in my life, and I still have plans for so many more.  I've got great friends, and thanks to Sue and Jill, my first real year of concerts was a complete and utter blast.  I look back just at the past year, and think to myself how much fun I've had, how well things have gone overall, and how this year's just going to be better than the last.

I guess this is one of those "bittersweet moments," where you measure your life against the good and the bad, and try to make some sense of the future.  Maybe it's that 30 sounds like a milestone, that it seems like an accomplishment when one knows that some of the people he went to school with didn't make it that far.  Or maybe it's just some cosmic encounter with even numbers divisible by ten that makes the universe go all goofy.

Turning 30 wasn't as overwhelming as I thought it would be at 15.  Yeah, my younger brother's about to turn 16, and hopefully his life's as full of adventure as mine was a decade and a half ago.  I guess I'll just have to say that I'm whelmed to have turned 30.

Here's to the next 10, the next 20, the next 30... ah hell... here's to the next 60.  With my family history, I'm not even a third of the way through my life.  And maybe that's the best part of this all... I've had so much fun in the first thirty years, I can hardly imagine what the next thirty will bring!

Egypt, New Zealand... yeah... that's what I'm talking about...  It's time to start some travelling!