You Say It’s Your Birthday

March 5, 2012

If there’s one thing the internet likes, it’s boobs. If there are two things the internet likes, it’s boobs and cats. But if there are three things the internet really likes, it’s boobs, cats, and inspirational lists. You can find them on any carpe diem-themed blog, and for some reason they’re especially popular on travel blogs.

They’re always called “50 Things I’ve Learned By Age 50”, or “86 Things My 86-Year-Old Grandma Taught Me (Most Of Which You’re Going to Skip Because 86 Things Is 85 Too Many)”. I never, ever read these lists in their entirety, and I suspect no one does. I start them with the best intentions, but as soon as I read #3 or #4 (it’s always something like, “Whenever God closes a door, he opens a window because God hates air conditioning hahaha”) I get bored, and then I’m off to some other site to look at cats or boobs. (Mostly cats. I have my own boobs.)

And someday I’m going to have 80 of my own cats!

Those lists sort of feel like cheating. Shouldn’t I be making my own dumb mistakes, resulting in my own dumb epiphanies? None of these life lessons mean anything to me because I didn’t expend any effort to reach them. People can tell you your whole life that ovens are hot, but that doesn’t mean anything until you burn yourself baking a pie and the next day at school you pretend your injury is from a spitting cobra. Let me have my own experiences, Internet.

I meant that last paragraph, but it was also an excuse for the following statement: I’ve sold out. I wrote one of those lists. In my defense, it was my 22nd birthday recently and being more than a quarter of the way to death makes a person think about what’s really important.

What’s Really Important

– Calling your grandma

– Being nice to other people

– Trying to justify a dumb thing you wrote

– Dental hygiene

– Finding smooth segues between lists

Pictured: a smooth Segway

22 Things I’ve Learned in 22 Years (That I Thought of in 22 Minutes)

1) There will come a time when you are sitting in bed and you really want to eat some crackers. Cracker crumbs + sheets = THE WORST COMBINATION EVER.

2) You will only have unexpected guests when your apartment or home is messy. If you’re really unlucky, it will always be the same unexpected guest and you will be a slob in their minds forever. There’s nothing you can do about this.

3) It’s impossible for every facet of your life to go well at the exact same time. When your career is an A+, your personal life is a B- at best. No one has a 4.0 in life.

4) If you wear down the tread on your Keds, you can slide really far on carpet and tile!

5) When someone compliments your outfit, they might really mean it. Alternately, they might have entered conversational panic mode because they have no idea what else to say to you.

6) Going through someone’s music collection is way more revealing than going through someone’s medicine cabinet. You can even tell which STDs they have based on how many 3OH!3 songs they own.

7) Aprons are the best. You can keep all kinds of things in the pockets, they cover up any weird wardrobe malfunctions you’re having, and it’s socially acceptable to get food all over them. What I’m trying to say is, let’s bring aprons back in a big way.

8) Someone is always going to hate your decisions. Not just one decision either, but EVERY DECISION YOU MAKE, even if it’s just deciding to get out of bed in the morning. Someone will have a problem with everything you ever do, but you know what? It’s your life.

9) Everyone thinks their feet are weird-looking. I don’t know what the foot standard is, but we have to stop holding ourselves up to it.

10) If you have big eyes, bugs will get in them. You’ll spend nearly 12% of your summer vacations explaining that you’re not crying– there’s a gnat in your giant eyeball.

They look way worse up close.

11) We all have one superpower. One person I know has the uncanny ability to find a parking spot near the front of any lot. My superpower is the ability to attract balls. (Not like that.) If there is a sport being played nearby and some kind of ball is being thrown, it will fly toward my head every time without fail. Sometimes I can control Frisbees, too.

12) You don’t eat right. According to doctors, and Oprah, and your paleolithic ovo-lacto vegetarian friend, your dietary habits are so wrong that you should be dead. On that note…

13) For some reason, it’s always socially acceptable to disparage someone’s eating habits, fish-sitting technique, and child-rearing practices. During the first two weeks of February, it’s also ok to publicly pity someone for being single. This behavior makes people want to stab you, but society has your back.

14) You should always make sure you’re not dreaming before you answer the door to the police. It’s also a good idea to double-check your pants situation.

15) Knitting is not relaxing, so we can all stop pretending it is. It’s incredibly frustrating when you mess up and there are two pointy, stabby sticks involved. It’s a bad idea to give pointy, stabby sticks to frustrated people.

16) No one liked middle school. Every one of us spent those years stewing in a giant ooze of hormones and every one of us has at least one horror story from them. We wore unfortunate clothing. We said unfortunate things. People should just be cryogenically frozen through puberty.

17) If you have a weird bump on your head, everyone will want to see or touch it. I don’t know why that is. It seems wrong.

18) The funnies are not funny. Why do they call them that?

19) Mustaches are wasted on the people who can grow them.

Except you, sir.

20) There’s such thing as too much DayQuil.

21) If you ask for a good haircut, there’s a distinct possibility the stylist is going to give you one that looks remarkably like theirs. When you ask people what they think a good job for you would be, they’re going to recommend whatever it is they do. “Good” is subjective.

22) My attention span only extends to 21 list items.

Written by Listful Thinking Posted in Growing Up Tagged with birthday, Humor, life lessons, list