Twenty Nine

My friend Mandi was right. Twenty nine is a very unglamorous year. It’s like, I’m in my twenties, but not really. I feel like I’m spending the last year of my twenties sitting around waiting to turn thirty. And when I turn thirty, I’ll have it all figured out, won’t I?

Say someone tells you that they work as a waitress. If they were twenty something, then you’d kinda think, “okay then, a waitress. That’s not a bad job to have while you’re deciding what career path to take”. But say they told you that they work as a waitress, and they were in their thirties. You would assume that was the career path they’d chosen. You would perhaps assume that they worked as a waitress to supplement their husband’s income. Maybe they have a couple of kids – they’re in their thirties, after all – and working as a waitress fits in perfectly because she can look after the kids during the day, and he can look after them at night while she goes to work. If she had no children, then you’d think, “a waitress? She wanted to be a waitress? Fair enough then… maybe she’s a great people person”. I dunno. Nothing against waitresses, mind you. I suppose it seems a bit like one of those jobs that people do while they’re looking for something else. Like working in the accounts department, perhaps.

At the moment, I feel like there is nobody else my age. Everyone seems to be either younger or older. A few years ago, I could have blended in reasonably well with the university aged people, without being automatically bundled in with the mature-aged-put-your-bloody-hand-down-in-lectures group. These days, there is no way I’d fit in with the scruffy bemulleted lot coming currently departing the waning college system. For one thing, I don’t even own an Ipod, let alone feel the need to get the ear buds surgically implanted. For another, I don’t see the need to remove every vowel from every word I write, be it in email or text. I really don’t think it saves any time, and I think it shows a laziness bordering on ignorance.

Of course, there are people my own age around, but they’ve either got ‘real jobs’ or have started a family. So I guess I consider them ‘older’, even though they’re not, simply because I can’t really relate to them. I feel like my friends are getting younger and younger, as I subconsciously connect with people with similar interests and lifestyles, and those in their early to mid twenties haven’t started to think about careers or families too much yet. This is fine at the moment – as a twenty nine year old, I’m still technically in my twenties. But once I hit my thirties, well, it strikes me as kind of creepy.

Like that guy at the night club, trying to crack on to all the girls who look young enough to be his daughter. There's one in every crowd.