Thirty-three

With the exception of those New Year's babies who have it by way of pure coincidence, there are no ball drops for the Average Joe's personal breathing anniversary.  When we're little, our moms fill the minivans for us and drop us off for bowling or laser tag with pizza and cake waiting at the other end.  Our friends' moms buy us cards and gifts and after a number of years, our own friends have enough money themselves to get us shamefully drunk.  Sometimes we get laid.  Mostly we just hope pictures of the event are not posted on social media.

If one's thirty-third birthday is remarkable for anything, and it really shouldn't be, it would be as one in life's LMNOP sequence.  Like the corresponding Scrabble tiles, the age suggests a potentially versatile and valuable contribution to the Big Board.  It's also indicative of one of those final opportunities to mount an offensive; while a lucky few can score with Q, V, or Z, most are left without a play.

Thirty-three, like LMNOP, is part of an anonymous run.  For the birthday itself, if not at L, then certainly by P, the transition should pass from getting drunk to grabbing dinner.  You take solace in the fact that quarterbacks still playing at your age are at the prime of their game.  You should no longer be in denial that whatever it is you're at the prime of, nobody is paying to see it.  There should be some semblance of a life around you and if you are worth being measured, it is because you have built that life yourself.  Your first notions that you already are Horatio Alger can begin around this age, if they apply.

I muse, I wonder, I reflect, and I still project on these very first few minutes of my own thirty-third birthday.  I have the time.  I will spend it in the company of the one person I am fortunate to know and scan social media to gather best wishes from the rest.  The whole experience will be a reminder that the life I have built, in its immediate form, is still in its very nascent stages.  The Whole Endeavor seems to be a gamble on the end game and we're far enough along that many of my co-players are nervous on my behalf.  Make a show of it, they think.  Quit trying to shoot the moon and just take the points that are resting on the table, they say.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't chewing a bit on my fingernails and guessing what's on my opponents' tiles.

The strategy remains the same.  There's still a few triple word scores remaining, a couple triple letters, and I'm not willing to concede that I haven't already been dealt the tiles and that ZVXQ is not a word.   Happy birthday to me, it's my turn.  I'll eschew the Easy Play once again and keep playing for the big prize.  Sing along, if you wish.

On fish and ponds

Let us speak about their ratio, shall we?

You can be the Big Fish in the Little Pond, or the Little Fish in the Big Pond, but stating that these are the only two scenarios speaks only for poor optics.  We like the metaphors because it gives some illusion of choice in the whole matter.  Yes, my share of the population is far greater in the Crescent than it was in the Apple, but that doesn't mean I'm not still a guy who falls in the three-figure category for budgeted rent.  All politics is local.  Think globally, act locally.  The grass is always greener and I'd be a damned fool were I to believe I was any more consequential because I changed zip codes.  We are all fish of imperceptibly different sizes swimming in one massive, sinuous and connected waterway just downriver from the petrochemical plant.  The wealthy few have the latest scuba gear and are far too indifferent to bring along any laminated identification charts to tell us apart.  Just so long as we don't slow down the turbines, this part of the water is ours.

I would also be mistaken to dismiss the metaphor outright.  This Little Pond has not only smaller schools, but also fewer swimmers worth angling, if we allow ourselves a clearer look at the optics.  Dripping fresh-off-the-boat in a new land with one of the industrial world's worst educational systems is not an entirely bad thing, if we're being selfishly honest about the whole thing.  It's like all the outstanding marks in those audited gym classes suddenly counted toward my GPA upon transferring.  There are still some ropes to master, a little of the Local Nuance, if you will, but I'm already starting a few body lengths closer to the roof.  Being born, for a select few, is not without its privileges.

Still, it's not as if the same rules governing the Big Pond are applicable to this smaller body of water.  My home of yore has a palate for Chilean sea bass and albacore; down here you'd be hard-pressed to find a place without catfish.  To a certain extent, size does matter in both.  But this pond down here is better suited to the three-eyed salamander, the earth-toned bottom-feeder, the mono-finned red snapper.  The grosser the deformity, the least apt for the wholesome New England Sunday dinner table, the better suited one will be.

A rule change this far upstream ain't fair, but this is where I chose to spawn.  Who knows what grotesqueries I've signed up for, what hideous manifestations lay in wait?  Strange Happenings and strong currents all around this riparian zone and I've been advised not to drink the water.  I'm just swimming in it instead.