I am 421 months old today!
Okay, so my real birthday was a month ago. Counting your age in years as you grow older just makes more sense than the increments you used in your youngest years.
When I was eight and a half years old, I asked my mom an important question.
“When do you stop counting the halves in your age?”
“When you’re 35,” she responded.
(I still haven’t figured out if she was serious or not, but it doesn’t matter now.)
All of the units of measurement of age are quite relative. Milestones change for different times in your life, and with good reason. When you’re a baby, a month is a long time. If you’re a month old, then half of your life has been the average lifespan of your typical mosquito.
Ah, mosquitoes. The bane of any Southerner’s existence in the summertime. It serves as little comfort that they don’t live very long in proportion to our lives, because they repopulate very, very quickly…so that we can scratch our legs for months.
Proportionally speaking, a week’s worth of living could make a mosquito eligible for AARP.
I think the “old-timer” mosquitoes sit around in rocking chairs on the front porch of an arm or a leg and reminisce about the good old days…a week ago.
They discuss something worth remembering, like their best meal.
“Remember that time Mr. Jones was asleep? Talk about an all-you-can-eat buffet! That’s livin’! He didn’t swat at me or nothin’! He just kept on snorin’!”
Then, they might start remembering “old” friends.
“Yeah, Joey. Good guy. Told him to stay away from that light. But, he was a stubborn kid. Just a couple of days past the pupa stage. No convincing that kid to listen to his week-elders, though.”
“And what about ol’ Pete? Man, he was only thirty minutes away from retirement when that flyswatter got him.”
As young children, our ages are measured by the minute, day, month, and then years. Beyond that, we begin to obscure it even further by referring to decades.
“Well, I think she’s in her forties.”
Whatever you choose to use for age identification purposes, just remember this…at least you’re not a mosquito.
Age gracefully, my friends.