Prev. published August 2001- Alton Telegraph
I remember it very clearly. It was the October that I turned 12 years old. That was the perfect birthday. My parents had (grudgingly) given their permission for me to have my very first slumber party. What began as a simple slumber party with three of my closest friends became a bash to end all bashes!
I invited the aforementioned three closest friends, and word got out about the party, and before I knew it, every girl in the entire sixth grade class knew about it. I had 15 girls show up, all with sleeping bags. Thank goodness I went to a really small school, things could have been MUCH worse.
My mother was not a happy camper. That woman made ten homemade pizzas that night(remember, this was way before Domino's delivered in 30 minutes or less). We drank gallons of soda, had cake and ice cream and generally destroyed our newly renovated basement. I was the most popular girl in my school for weeks after that.
Needless to say, this was the last of my slumber parties. It wasn't the party that made it such a great age. The world and all it's possibilities lay ahead. You don't have a job yet, and anytime you want something, all you have to do is attempt to "guilt" your parents into it. Ah, if only everything in life were that easy anymore.
My children are still in those perfect ages for birthdays. My daughter turned 14 in May and my son just reached the age of 8 this week. Have you noticed that as we grow older the birthday itself takes on much more meaning. We become aware of how many years we have left as opposed to how many years we've been on this earth. My boyfriend recently turned 40, and I will soon be facing my own 37th birthday in October. YIKES!!
I have to say he handled his birthday fairly well. I am not so sure I will do the same. It's a running joke in my family that I have chameleon-like hair. I've been covering the gray with so many different shades of brown, burgundy-brown, and cinnamon-brown that my real mahogany shade has been lost to time forever.
The average person lives to be roughly eighty-something years old, with subtractions
or additions for lifestyle factors. How do you stack up? A great place to find out is this great website I found. Check it out yourself at www.beeson.org/Livingto100/quiz.htm.
According to this site, I should live to be 85.6 years old. That gives me roughly 48.6 years to accomplish everything I was put on this earth to do. Now, if I would give up my coffee in the morning, exercise daily instead of monthly, and eat less fried foods and more fruits and vegetables, I would be able to add a few more years to my life expectancy. OK, so I would live to be 90, but I'd die of boredom because I would be too perfect.
The point is that we, as humans, put way too much stock in the number of years that we've lived and not enough in the experiences we've had to get us there. We forget that life is a journey, not a destination. We shouldn't wait for life to happen to us, we should go out and live it now.
What is on your life's "to do" list? Do you want to climb a mountain? Do you want to travel to foreign lands or simply explore more of your own country? Do you want to get in better shape? Do you want to finish your education or change your career path? The only person standing in your way is you.
Don't wait for a miraculous sign from the heavens that will never come. Just remember that your life is now. What you do with it is the only legacy you will ever leave behind.
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