In light of the fact that today's my birthday, I feel it is only fair that I share with you a few stories from the past couple of days that really elucidate what it's like to be an aging woman in today's society.
Let's first start at Mother's Day dinner. You can imagine what Mother's Day is like in my family. My mom orders the Broiled Idaho Trout and my brothers start yelling, "I da ho? No YOU da ho," and so on...
At one point, the subject of my birthday came up, and my oldest brother turned to me and asked, "How old are you going to be anyway? Thirty-four? Thirty-five? No, thirty-three, right?"
"No, dude. Thirty-two."
At which point my mother sighed loudly and moaned with pure defeat, "I'm NEVER going to be a grandmother."
Because the fact that I'm 32 with only a few remaining eggs clinging on for dear life is the reason she's never going to be a grandmother. Not the fact that I hate babies. And commitment.
Fast-forward to last night. I'm at a bar celebrating a friend's birthday, and one of my dear friend's tells her date that tomorrow is my birthday.
"Let me guess how old you're going to be," he says. As though THAT'S a fun game chicks like to play.
I declined, politely, but he insisted. (When girls say they like for guys to be aggressive, by the way, that's not what we're talking about.)
"Do you want me to lie or be honest?" he asked as he moved his entire head two inches from my face so as to better scrutinize my wrinkles.
"Oh, just be honest," I said. There are some guys I don't need to do me any favors. And he was quickly becoming a front-runner on that list.
"31," he guessed.
"Nope. 32," I said, happy this ridiculous game was finally over and that my personal space was going to be returned to me.
"Yeah," he added. "That's what I was actually going to say."
And what I was going to say was "FUCK YOU, you smug piece of shit."
But I didn't. Because I'm 32 and I think means I have to start behaving like a lady. Also: yelling causes wrinkles. So there's that.