Turning 26

At about 11:30 PM the day before my birthday I removed the date from being listed on Facebook to mitigate the deluge of “Huppy Birfday” messages.  I checked through other birthday publishing things and turned those off as well but missed one: my TF2 team’s site.   Shortly after midnight, someone on the west coast posted “Happy Birthday” and the cascade of the news feed rolled across my friends list.  Damn.  There is a down-side of not giving a date in that people make assumptions when not given information such as the message from a Scout friend “congratulations on making it to 32!”.

My brother has missed a couple of my birthdays in the past and I don’t hold it against him but he’s developed as a gifter.  I received a text message in the morning asking me if I wanted anything in particular, I said no, so I got cash, a card and a pack of gum.  He felt uncomfortable not giving me an actual box.

26 feels much like 20 and 22 as useless ages with no milestones.  23-29 is one of the rare inversions in the aggregate life table were one’s less likely to die year-on-year and I can feel the wisdom of age reducing my chances of dying this year being 35 millionths lower than last year.  To prove it, I’m going to forego my summer ritual of wrestling a bear while bungee jumping.