Looking at 30

I’m sitting here with a little bit more than 5 months of my twenties left, and I’ve been thinking about aging. Here are a couple of my random thoughts.

-Graying hair is a pretty appealing prospect when you grow up expecting to be bald by 29. Having a full head of gray hair becomes a worthy goal.

-Skinny 16 year olds are not immune to weight gain later in life. 40 pounds in 14 years is not terrible for a former pencil neck geek, but it definitely takes a couple extra fractions of a second to get down to first base. My goal? Split the difference between then and now at about 20 pounds. Heh. At least I still have my sense of humor.

-As an aside to the above, be careful what you wish for. At 16, I wanted to weigh 195 pounds. 195 pounds of muscle, not 195 pounds of beer by-product.

-Even though there is more around the middle than I would like, 195 does not look all that bad on a 5’11” frame. A dressed 5’11” frame.

-I’m looking forward to that day when my body naturally wakes me up at dawn. Currently, my body wants to naturally wake me up somewhere around, well, never.

-I may be saying goodbye to my twenties, but I’m still in that “all important 18-35 age range.” Boo yeah!

-Twenty year olds look younger every day. At this rate, I’ll want to put diapers on them by the time I’m 40.

-Aches. Where the hell do these mystery aches come from? I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING YESTERDAY!

-You start to find yourself squeamish about hanging out with a bunch of 20 year olds. Not that there is anything wrong with it per se, you just feel like the old dude who doesn’t belong because he’s been there before. A decade ago.

-The idea of going out and having home run derbies all day long still seems appealing. Problem is, gathering up all of those baseballs doesn’t seem appealing at all anymore, so you just end up sitting down and watching a game instead (hence, 40 pounds).

-You begin to develop the patience for things that you didn’t have the patience for before, like fishing or golf.

-You begin to lose patience for things you used to have all the patience in the world for, like standing in line at a bar, or being crammed shoulder to shoulder in a crowd of drunk, underdressed college students.

-You begin to take a perverse pleasure in mowing the lawn (pretty much guys only).

-Yeah, my clothes don’t match today. I ain’t here to impress you anyway.