Yesterday, I turned 29. September 16 is statistically the most common birthday in America. At least it is for kids born between 1973 and 1991. If I have the most common birthday in the America, I’m assuming that makes ME very…common? It’s less common to be born on a day that I was not born on.
Strong start.
Since I haven’t written in a while, and I’m half celebrating, I’m just going to post a bunch of random things that I want to share.
First, there’s this —>
Super Hero Gif
Second, here are 3 great songs that I apparently wrote down on a notepad doc and wanted to remember for some reason. Funny how that works. I wrote them down because I wanted to remember them, but I can’t remember why I wanted to remember them. Maybe it was just so I could listen to them again. Anyways…
Violin – Amos Lee
Levon – Elton John
Rubblebucket – What A Fool Believes (Doobie Brothers Cover)
Within the past year, I’ve started killing spiders with my hands. Not like…for fun. Or when I’m sober. But if there’s a spider running around inside, I’ll just smash it with my hand. But the probability of me killing it with my hands is influenced by the size of the spider, the fear of me losing it and then not knowing where it went, and how many drinks I’ve had.
It’s weird to think that I’ve known some people for more years in my life than I have not known them. I was 12 when I was in 7th grade, so I’ve known a few friends for 17 years now.
When we’re young, I think we want to be older because we hate feeling the limits that youth has on us. Up until I think you’re in college, you feel like you want to be older because you think it’s cool. But what you don’t realize is that, when you actually do get older, it can be very uncool and very limiting. When you’re really young, you feel like people who are older can do whatever they want. But when you’re older, you rarely get to do whatever you want. When you’re in your teens, you just want to be able to drive. But when you’re older, you complain about traffic and having to drive everywhere. College is the middle ground, and we never truly appreciate it until we’re out. Like George Bernard Shaw once said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I’m not that smart. I heard this in a song or something and just Googled it.
I think what we all want is freedom. Freedom to do what we want, when we want to do it, regardless of age. But life doesn’t give a lot of people that chance. Two months ago hyper-extended my knee playing basketball and had to walk around work with a limp for a week. Two weekends ago, I dislocated my shoulder playing basketball, and it’s still impacting my daily life. Like I just hurt my shoulder opening a beer. I winced in pain because I popped off the bottle cap at a weird angle. That’s so dumb. Earlier this year, I tweaked my hip bowling. BOWLING, for fuck’s sake.
Getting old is scary. At some point, not just our bodies, but our minds start to fall apart. It scares me to think that my grandma might not remember me at some point and there will be nothing that I can do to help her. She did everything she could for me when I couldn’t do it for myself. But old age does not allow for true reciprocation.
Life is a weird road. I think a reasonable goal is to live to 90, and some people don’t get there at all. You live a little and then your life may be taken away by someone or something before you wanted it to end. And if you’ve ever lost someone important, you’ll realize that the pain of the loss is directly related to how big of an impact that person had on your life. When I was in 3rd grade, my grandpa past away and that was the single biggest loss I’ve ever experienced in my life. 3 years ago, I lost a pair of sunglasses jumping into the ocean and I was sad for like 8 seconds. Crying over a loved one is a good thing. That makes you realize how important they were. And as terrible as it sounds, I think the goal in life is to make a bunch of people cry when you die haha.
But the pain is brief in the grand scheme of things. Ultimately, you’ll shake off the pain and just remember the reason why the pain was there: because of how great that person was.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: we all get lines in our face. I’d rather have them be from smiling and laughing than from old age.
Thanks for reading. Here’s to another great year.
– Spider Tears
