moving on up

One of the recurring themes here is how much I hate getting older. From what all the middle-aged folk at work tell me, turning thirty is the hardest birthday milestone and the imminence of my 30th year is haunting me. I mean before thirty, life seems great and full of new adventures. Up until thirty you have all these great things to look forward to:
o Turn sixteen-YAY you can drive. The first sign of independence.
o Turn eighteen-YAY you're an adult AND if you're so inclined (which shamefully most people aren't) you can vote. You can also buy cigarettes and get into NC-17 movies.
o Turn twenty-one-YAY you can do a lot of things now and most of them involve vices. You can drink, you can gamble, you can go to strip-clubs AND drink, the possibilities at twenty-one seem endless.
o Turn twenty-five-YAY your insurance premiums go down and somehow people start acting as if you're more mature even though you know that you still drink too much and still suffer through some horrifying displays of drunkenness. There's also the extremely exciting possibility that you'll still get carded, maybe even for cigarettes, and each and every time you think to yourself that you're just as youthful as you were four years ago.

But after twenty-five, birthday milestones are nothing to look forward to.
o Turn thirty-BOO, your youth has slowly slipped away, like some pathetic cliche of holding sand in the palm of your hand. Do you still pretend to be the young stallion of yesteryear or do you fully immerse yourself in responsible adult life, throwing dinner parties and going to cocktail hours while still longing for the all-consuming fun you had when you were twenty-one...when you truly didn't give a rat's ass about the impression you were giving total strangers, when you didn't start playing the what-if game because the truth of your mortality became evident somewhere around twenty-six when you threw out your back playing a pick-up game and all of the sudden words like good fiber, bad cholesterol, retirement accounts start to have meaning.
o Turn forty-BOO, you have been slapped square in the face with middle age. Now you get to say things like "Forty is the new thirty" and at some point start thinking of the very real possibilities of hot flashes and hormone replacement therapy. Not only that but forty is the turning point for tortuous medical procedures. Women get to look forward to boob-squishing mammograms, men get to look forward to prostate exams. The fun just doesn't stop.
o Turn fifty-BOO, fuck you're FIFTY. Now the panic sets in, you're paying for the kids college and debt is positively seeping out of each and every pore, you've realized that you didn't start saving for retirement soon enough, there's always the very real possibility you'll be laid off at work and you'll never be able to compete with those twenty- something whippersnappers. Maybe, just maybe, you'll become a grandparent and even though you act excited around your friends and co-workers, you secretly cry in the shower because you never thought your life would end up like this and now you're too old to fix it.
o Turn sixty-BOO, you're sixty. Well at this point you're so old you HAVE to start looking at the up-side to everything. You can retire soon and now you qualify for the senior special at Denny's and you get to say pretty much whatever the fuck you want to say because for some reason people love sassy geriatrics.
Of course this is just how it looks like from twenty-nine. I'm sure at thirty-nine I'll have a whole new perspective.