Birthday

Well, tomorrow I turn 39.

I'm really hoping no one - if they're doing anything - is planning one of those "over the hill" parties (Technically, I suppose I'm not at risk of one of those until next year).

I hate those things with a passion. I hate them when they happen to other people and I will hate it if it happens to me. I'd actually rather people ignored my birthday totally. And yeah, I realize I'm being kind of humorless about it, and I probably just need to relax a little, but when I see those things, I see sort of a bottled-up hostility coming out: either "ha ha you're old and we're not yet" or "One of us! One of us! HAHhahahahaha you're closer to the grave now!" depending on the age of the people giving the party.

And all the black crepe, and the cemetery-themed stuff, and the gag gifts of walkers and wrinkle cream and even once (as God is my witness) adult diapers, that I've seen at those parties - they don't seem all that funny to me.

(They especially don't seem all that funny when you have a close relative who USES a walker, and a more-distant relative who has to use adult diapers. And I hope to God that no person who every actually HAS to use adult diapers, and is able to disguise that fact, winds up being the recipient of them as a gag gift, because that's just unintentionally cruel.)

So I'm starting to twitch a little, anticipatorily. I know, I know, people feel they have the "right" to do this - to, as I see it, humiliate one of their friends in this way. But I don't like it. It's uncomfortable and the person being subjected to it just has to smile and eat it because you can't look like an old grouch at a birthday party designed to, well, remind you of how OLD you are.

Why do people do stuff like that to each other in the name of "you're my friend"? I just see it as hostility. I'm totally not programmed to get the whole "I am going to tease you and humiliate you within an inch of your life and it's because I love you" thing - it seems like an awfully dysfunctional relationship to me.

It's kind of like the people who harass pregnant women by feeling up their bellies in public places, or who bother newlyweds, by making all kinds of broad jokes about how much sex they're having. Stuff like that. I can kind of understand it (maybe) in families where that's the mode of relating, but it irks me when relative strangers think they can get so personal. Because in my family? Not so much. You didn't make jokes about how old someone was or about a woman's pregnancy or about couples or anything like that. You related in a different way and it's hard for me to wrap my head around what I interpret as slightly-cloaked hostility having to be accepted as friendly gestures.

And honestly? I feel no need to mourn my "lost youth." There was a lot of crap I experienced in my 20s and even early 30s that I am glad I will never have to revisit. It's not like all of a sudden a switch has been turned off and I'm no longer attractive - I never was, that much, or at least not in the way that had men falling at my feet, so there's no loss-of-looks to mourn. (And you know? I think aging is a lot easier on a woman when her personality and brains are her stronger suits; personality often improves with age, and brains can too, if you keep learning)

And it's not like I'm weaker or sicker than I was - if anything, I'm physically stronger, and I'm as healthy as I ever was. So not only do I find the concept of the party annoying, I find the underlying premise - that one should be sad because one is approaching middle age - sort of baffling. It's one of those things society tells me I "should" feel (just like I "should" be miserable because I'm not married or "shacked up") that make me want to wave my hands around like I'm swatting flies and go "Society, go eff yourself"

And I don't like the societal implication that I have somehow become useless now that I hit this age - that the purpose of women is to be baubles or vessels-for-the-next-generation, neither of which being a role I have taken on. (Not that I have anything against women who choose either of those roles, it's just I wish that the arm-candy/earth-mother dichotomy wasn't, well, a dichotomy).

Do men get this kind of crap? (Well, except Ken, who seems to unfortunately be a magnet for it, maybe he even encourages it). I don't remember there EVER being an over-the-hill party for men of my acquaintance but I've been to several for women. So again, it's the whole "you're useful as a bauble or a breeder; other than that, we don't know how to pigeonhole you, so we're going to presume that you wished you were one of those two" attitude.

Also, tomorrow is my busiest day. So if people are going to hassle me about being old - when I'm doing twice as much work as a lot of people younger than I am - they better get out of the way, because my head might explode.

I'd be happier if my birthday were on a Saturday where I could actually go out and do something fun. I know, I could go out this coming Saturday but it's not the same...