Happy birthday to me

Twenty-three years ago today, in a hospital in Northeast Philadelphia, one Daniel McQuade was born.

Er, wait. I guess it was 24 years ago. I never get this right. Let’s see, I’m 23 today, so I’m entering into my 24th year, right? I always feel embarrassed that I can’t ever figure this out.

Back in first grade, I used to get made fun of for my birthday. You see, when everyone else was already six years old, I was turning six on January 27, 1989, the youngest one in the grade. I was the youngest kid in high school, too, though by that time it didn’t matter much. It did matter again in college, when I didn’t turn 21 until the second half of my senior year, spending too much time wrangling with bartenders over fake IDs and sitting at home when everyone else was out.

That all seems so long ago now: feeling young, fake IDs, worrying about my age. And, of course, I am still young. It just doesn’t really feel that way anymore.

Some people reflect on their past year around the New Year, but I usually wait until my birthday, since it’s so close. Looking back at last year, I don’t really know what to think. I remember every detail, every argument, every work day, every transition, every disappointment, every success, in such vivid detail, but I’m not sure if it really even happened. Everything seems to go so fast. So much seems to happen.

Maybe it’s always like that. Just this past year, though, I seemed to do a lot. I moved out of my parents’ house to my own place in Center City. I did a decathlon. I sat for 12 hours on the Ben Franklin Parkway. I rode a Segway. I blacked out for three hours. I gained weight. I lost weight. I tried to move to New York (and failed). I got a $100 pair of jeans. And, uhm, hello, I got a job blogging?

You know the drill: If you had asked me if this is where I’d be in 2006 this time last year, I would have laughed blah blah blah. I think I say that every year. But sometime over the last 12 months, I really started to feel like I might just be turning into a responsible adult. Heck, I have dry cleaning to pick up on the way home.

And that’s both astounding and scary and wonderful, all at the same time. Sometimes I feel like I want to go back to playing Super Mario Bros. 2 with my dad in our wood-paneled Northeast Philly basement. But now, not only can I play Super Mario Bros. 2, I can play as Mario in 3D! And I can play as him in tennis and go karts and baseball and board games and golf and even Dance Dance Revolution!

Mario, of course, is a little busier than I am, and really the only major adulthood problems I’ve encountered so far is going over my text messaging limit and forgetting to balance my checkbook. While I don’t think I’ll be rescuing any princesses anytime soon, I do think it’s kind of scary that I could, soon, be facing actual, real world problems and have to do it all on my own. I don’t know what they’ll be, but I also don’t know if I’m going to be able to face them.

I know I’m not special. Everyone goes through this transition into adulthood, but I can’t help think other people are more prepared than me. Whether that’s just a simple case of middle-class insecurity or my usual uneasiness about my talents in life, I don’t know. But I can’t even get a date. How am I going to be able to invest money or write a book or continue to make a living or whatever else it is that grownups do? And when am I going to be able to get a puppy?

That’s all in the future, though. For now, I’m content to sit back, put my legs up, and hope the next 24 years are as successful as the first 24.

Dammit! I mean the next 23 years. Right? Oh, I’ll never figure this out.

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