Op-Ed
30 Signs That You're Approaching 30
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Silk Blue Stockings
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Undergrads: You may not think this applies to you, but it will — before you know it ... dun ... dun … dah …
1. The highlight of your weekend is when a bouncer gives you shit about your I.D. because he thinks it’s fake. In fact, I have never really gotten over the fear of getting carded, so I still act nervous … this is probably why everybody thinks my I.D. is fake, although I like to believe I actually still look under 21.
2. You have wet dreams about publishing in The New Yorker, instead of having fantasies about a three way with Brad and Angelina. (And if you had the choice, you’d still pick The New Yorker.)
3. Bad eyesight.
4. Waving enthusiastically to people you don’t know, due to your bad eyesight. This happens to me at least three times any given week. If some manic, over-dressed, white girl — should I say woman? — who you don’t know has frantically waved at you … that was me. Sorry.
5. Similarly, I don’t wave at people I do know, because I cannot see them. If you think I’ve been ignoring you, I probably just literally didn’t see you.
6. You get a dog to replace the baby you’re body is begging you to have. (This may or may not apply to men.) I got Barnaby this weekend. I am in love. I am trying to not become one of those people who make outs with her dog in public. However, I may just turn into one of those crazy Best In Show characters.
7. Sitting at home drinking wine and watching Jon Stewart is your idea of a perfect evening.
8. You’re walking down the street and you wonder who is following you and suddenly realize it’s just your own ass bouncing behind you. Yeah, you thought you were naturally skinny, but it turns out you were just naturally young.
9. I haven’t had gray hairs or balding yet, but this can happen.
10. Luckily, I haven’t run into much flaccidity, but this can happen to guys — the harder they were, the harder they fall. (I have no scientific evidence for that statement, so don’t e-mail me telling me I’m wrong.)
11. Women get more interested in sex. Men get less interested in sex: either that or I’m just not aging well and men are less interested in having sex with me.
12. You date a younger guy and feel more like his mother than his lover. It might have worked for Oedipus, but did anyone get a take on what it was like for the mom?
13. Not only are some of your friends getting married, but some people you used to baby-sit are tying the knot. Granted, they live in the South.
14. Some of your friends start procreating … on purpose!
15. Getting pregnant turns from the scary thing you should never do, at any cost … to what you must do, at any cost — including marrying someone really boring.
16. People who are afraid of dying alone start spontaneously proposing to you.
17. By the way, men have a ticking clock too: hence, spontaneous proposals … often from ex-boyfriends who realize you weren’t so bad after all.
18. You wonder if you’ve ruined your credit.
19. You realize you don’t know anything.
20. You begin to consider forgiving your parents.
21. You write thank-you cards regularly and consider cleaning fun … or maybe that’s just me. I’m a little OCD — and by “a little OCD,” I mean a lot OCD, as in clinically diagnosed OCD. Barnaby is working with me on my fear of feces and other undesirable substances.
22. You’ve tried several anti-depressants and decide to stick with the socially acceptable and mature way of dealing with problems — cigarettes and booze.
23. You worry about your parents and what they will do after they retire. You contemplate moving close by in order to keep an eye on them, but realize you’re still too selfish to do that.
24. People start saying, “You look good for your age.”
25. When you talk to your mentors about your career, they say, “You have plenty of time to decide,” with a panicked expression which indicates that there is absolutely no time left for dicking around.
26. You still want to dick around, and you do, but you don’t do so with a sense of entitlement, but rather with an overwhelming sense of guilt. (Peter Pan syndrome with a splash of chronic anxiety … I think I wear it well.)
27. Guilt — just in general.
28. Slowing of metabolism, loss of bladder control (just kidding, or am I?), acceptance of mediocrity, realization that by definition you are not a prodigy, taxes (Turbo-tax is killing my soul), cubicles, desk calendars (that you actually use) and loss of enthusiasm for celebrating your birthday.
29. Accumulation of innumerable I.D.s, parking tickets, exes, foibles, cavities, addresses of people you’ve forgotton and unread books.
30. A quarter life crisis. I think that the mid-life crisis gets way too much press, so no one pays attention to the quarter-life crisis. Around the age of 25 there is a moment of panic: or a prolonged moment of panic, which for me lasted about five years and has yet to stop.
Claire Readhead is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at clr39@cornell.edu. Silk Blue Stockings appears alternate Mondays.