I Am an Obsolete Child

Thirty-five short years ago

This is the first year in more years than I can even remember that I've been home on my birthday, and aside from a few minor details such as the fact that my mom now bakes with oddly named flours and strangely textured sugars, if she uses sugar at all, and the fact that the obligatory cake-holding pictures no longer have the long striped brown and tan curtains in the background, things were pretty much just as I remember, though I'm no longer the youngest one around. 

That said, I still feel remarkably juvenile for having been alive for half of seventy years, if quite forgetful, absent-minded, and generally crotchety. People are usually quite willing to forgive the aged these offenses, but being in your mid-thirties doesn't seem to garner the same sympathy as one twice your age when it comes such traits, which in my case happen to run in the family.

My dad, who for a week now has now been alive for the whole of seventy years, has been losing things, forgetting things, and grousing about things for years. As far as I know, he has been in a perpetual state of looking for his keys/phone/wallet/dark glasses, of entering a room and looking mildly surprised to find himself there, of leaving the house only to promptly return to retrieve a forgotten item (see above), or of stalking around while muttering incomprehensibly about some injustice or another since the mid-eighties. Already being dangerously skilled in this particular routine myself, one can only guess what my state will be in another thirty-five years.

A very considerate birthday gift to my dad helpfully pointed out that You're Only Old Once! and concluded with the parting thought 'you're in pretty good shape for the shape you are in.' If I can be in half as good of shape at seventy as my dad is, then I don't mind getting older. To another thirty-five years!