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Happy Birthday does not exist in my phrasebook

November 02, 2002 ~ 2:00 a.m.

This entry is for me. To those of you who think you know the nightdragon well, you may be in for a shock. But as I say, this one is a catharsis of sorts and is totally for me:

It�s a sunny, mild morning in late 1979. I�m about to �go into double digits,� as I proclaim to the neighborhood all day. In other words, I�m on the verge of my tenth birthday. My entire fourth-grade class is expected to arrive to help me join me in celebrating the big 1-0. I am as excited as you�ll ever know. One thing I know for certain is that I�m getting a BigTrak for a present. C�mon, all you thirtysomething Americans, you remember those! It was all the rage in �79.

Two years later, I am riding up the street on my bicycle, Billy Joel�s �She�s Always a Woman to Me� rolling around in my head (must have had something to do with listening to The Stranger album a thousand times before going out), blissfully wondering what exactly he meant by throwing shadows at someone and earning one�s degree. (Fahrenheit, Celsius or Kelvin?) Somehow, I knew that turning 12 was a special occasion, a strengthening of the puberty that I�d already begun to feel. I didn�t know anything about it, but I didn�t question it either. I was gonna be twelve come 7:30 that fall evening in 1981 and I was proud of it.

Those were the birthdays I�ll always remember most fondly. It was a time to like birthdays. A time to feel proud. A time to look forward to the future.

Now I loathe and resent my birthdays. This Wednesday, I will turn 33. Whoop-de-fucking-do! Is that another grey hair I see sprouting from my sideburns? Is that another grand that I paid toward my life insurance? Is that another painful twinge in my lower back? Most of all, is that yet another dream that I once loved and held so dear in my younger days that I�ve now seen stabbed and butchered and bled to death since then?

One fine summer day, when I was 12, I declared that I was �gonna head south all day.� With a compass and a notebook in hand, I followed a southerly direction. I must have walked about three hours. What adventures I was going to have! I sure did all right, one that sent my heart racing into overdrive. I was walking through the parking lot of a business. The signs attached to the building announced, in bold scary letters, NO TRESSPASSING � POLICE TAKE NOTICE! I ran like I�d never run before, not even in my high-school cross-country days four years in the future. But damnit, someday I was going to be a famous geographer, a world-renowned explorer, blazing the trail of adventure everywhere I went. I had wet dreams about Alaska.

Maybe, to a certain degree, I�ve accomplished some of that. I have my BS degree in Geography, earned at age 24 (�and so much more,� according to Neil Young). I haven�t been to Alaska yet, but I also fantacized about Europe in those early days and now I have England, France, Italy, Spain and Belgium all notched under my belt. That sense of adventure, admittedly, has not died. So why do I still feel so incomplete?

Life was to be explored. Challenges were to be faced and I absorbed learning and science like a sponge. I was reasonably content and happy. Then something happened. I grew older. That optimistic blessing of youth disappeared. As Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes once stated, �a lifetime of experience has left me bitter and cynical.�

So I�ve travelled. I�ve found that it�s not all it�s cracked up to be.

So I live in London. I miss where I�m from. Terribly at times.

So I�ve earned my degree. It�s gotten me an average 9-to-5 job. In my youthful dreams, a degree in Geography had me doing some serious environmental planning, digging for fossil fuels in rocks, gerrymandering elective districts. Now I answer queries from college students that are ten years younger than me.

But the most fucked up thing about it all? Every year older was a good year. It was all the closer I was to getting out of school, establishing my independence and becoming the award-winning National Geographic writer I wanted to be.

But I joined the rat race instead. I�m Mr. Anonymous. Another face in the crowd.

And now another birthday is on the horizon. I don�t want to know anything about it. I will not be celebrating it. I will come home Wednesday night at my normal time, crack open a beer, watch some TV or play a game of baseball on the PlayStation and then go to bed.

What a life. I expected more and got far less. But am I any different? I suppose not. It takes exceptional fortitude to actually see one�s young dreams come true. And I just simply didn�t have it.

And so, on Wednesday, I will be older. That�s all, nothing more. Just older. And it is certanly not a fact to be celebrated. I just don�t want to know about it.

In fact, here�s my hope for what little remains of my future � to stop being so obsessed with numbers, that I don�t have to walk around with an invisible �33� dangling from my neck like some fucking scarlet letter. Perhaps if I can just not see what�s happening, ignore the brutally mundane adult life that I�ve been hurled into, I�ll be alright.

Wednesday will be just another day for me. Just another day. Just another stinkin�, ordinary day �

� M.E.M.

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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.

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