I’ve just turned 26. This is remarkably less romantic than turning 25, because 25 is such a nice round number (well…square number, I suppose. A nicely shaped number), while 26 is kind of awkward and divisible by 13 and whatnot.
And so my 26th birthday was fraught with both ridiculous bad luck and awesomeness.
Bad luck: While driving to my workplace to retrieve my wallet and cell phone (a sad story in and of itself), I sprung a flat in the middle of the 520 bridge. In a moment of amazing luck, I was not assisted by the cops (who undoubtedly would have wanted to know where my driver’s license was), but by two minivans containing the Northwestern University Track and Field team. Huzzah! The day was slowly saved, I got some new tires, had a birthday party in the evening, and there were cupcakes and happiness for all. Having my tire changed by lots of nice young people in matching track suits on the 520 bridge was a surreal moment, that’s for sure.
In my writing life, I begin my second class at Richard Hugo House this week; it’s a fiction critique class with Nancy Kress. I will bring in an 8,000 word chunk of November Girls. It will be epic. Or something.I continue to write poems for the class with David Wagoner. Poetry continues to be hard, even at age 26. Some things don’t change overnight. The number attached to my age seems to be one of the few things that does.
1 comment
Angela Mondragon
October 3, 2010 at 4:53 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Ages are merely numbers, and in my opinion have little bearing on who we are and what we actually do. I feel a lot of superficial pressure lately to get married, have kids, get the career thing sorted out, and in other words, get on with my life. So many of my friends have reached these stages by now that I feel I’ve missed the memo. I figure I’ll get there when I get there and damn what anyone else thinks. I’m working on moving, going back to school to study towards my next degree, and with any luck, meeting someone and starting off a career. In the meantime, I look back and reflect that compared to a lot of these people who have hit their milestones before me, I’ve done a great deal more. I’ve earned a college degree, traveled to two other continents, and spent time actually working on one of them. I’m learning another language, studying another culture, and instructing a martial art. I guess it’s just easier to explain to people that my milestones are on a different list than theirs.
Hope you had a happy birthday, it sounds especially fun to have had tires changed by a bunch of guys in matching uniforms, and that your writing continues to progress in the direction you’re working toward.