July 17th is my birthday. Hold the applause, all I did was not die for a whole year…again. No cause for celebration, balloon animals, silly hats, or clowns…especially clowns. It is just the day the record keeper of all things numerical raises its ugly head and with a slobbery sneer, dripping with sarcasm and cynicism, blathers on and on trying to convince me that I’m 41 years old. “You’re closer to 50 than you are to 30” he says in an attempt to make me slump into a melancholy stupor and ponder my life.

I don’t like him much but luckily as I get older it’s getting easier to turn a deaf ear his way. Not because I don’t care, not because I’ve accepted my advanced state of years, but because quite literally my hearing isn’t what it used to be. Teenage boys must speak in a frequency that scrambles as it reaches my ears. I’m about to hang a chalkboard around my sons neck and just have him write whatever it is I’ve had to have him repeat seven times. I assume it’s some form of the same English language I enjoy using but maybe their using Dutch in the school systems now. It’s been awhile since I’ve been in school things change.

So how was the first year of my fourth decade? Optimistically, I postponed my mid-life crisis until I hit 50. I’ve got a lengthy list of things I need to get done and 80 years just didn’t seem to be enough time to squeeze it all in.

The 40th year was a pretty good year. Way back in the early 1990s, during my first few years of college at Northern State University in Aberdeen, I was fortunate to have many wonderful instructors. Instructors that enjoyed what they did and inspired me to want to become like them. It was at that time that my younger self told himself that by the time he was 40 he was going to complete a doctoral degree. Fighting off my weakness for procrastination I was able to cross that goal off my list a few months ago.

Why didn’t my younger self tell himself he was going to be a billionaire by the time he was 40? The idiot never thought of that I guess. Maybe next time.

It’s hard not to find yourself pondering life when your birthday rolls around. It’s good to reflect but what’s done is done and life isn’t going to pause very long for you before it rolls on. Pause and ponder but don’t pout or the big bird of bad tidings will crap on your lip. You won’t get invited to any festivities of fun with that on your lip, your wife won’t kiss you, your kids will run their fingernails along their chalk boards and their friends will scoff at you in Dutch. Bad news on all fronts.

So 41 it is. It’s mirror image year for my son and I this year as he turns 14 on July 16th. I suppose we could hold each other up to the mirror and see reflections of what was and what’s to come but that would be depressing for all involved. Proficiat met je verjaardag Jackson…and many…many more.