Twenty-seven

(I'm writing this on the 7th, because I don't know how much time I'll have on the 8th. But I'll change the date to the 8th to avoid confusion.)

Today (if you're pretending with me that it's the 8th already) I turn twenty-seven years old.

Of course, I've been telling people that I was twenty-seven for a few months now. I always do that, because all my friends who are my age have had their birthdays already. I've had time to get used to the age. I also usually forget that I haven't already turned twenty-seven because I remember my age by knocking the two zeros out of the middle of the year. I turned 20 in 2000. I turned 23 in 2003. (1980 really was the best year ever to be born, because of the ease of remembering my age.) I'm not looking forward to my thirtieth birthday, not because of any "growing old" type fears, but because I won't be able knock the zeros out anymore. Thankfully, that's the age where I'll start getting to add the numbers: in 2010 I turn thirty. 20+10=30. In 2023 I turn forty-three. 20+23=43.

For a historian who can't add in her head, I love number games like that.

Twenty-seven is an exciting age, once I get past the fact that I have to stop referring to myself as being in my "mid-twenties." (I'm inching into "late twenties" territory.)

My Daddy was twenty-seven when I was born, and so from now until August, his age will be exactly double mine! We were really excited when we figured that out.

Twenty-seven is also my Dad's exaggerating number. (Mine is fifty billion.) If he tells you that he's already had to do something tweeennnty-seven times, you know that the number is approximate. He emphasises the twenty like that: tweeeennnnty-seven.

It'll also be easier to pretend to be a grown up with this fancy new late-twenties age. Twenty-seven. It sounds nice.

I'll have a lot of fun with being twenty-seven. But I have one question: do I actually have to be a grown-up now?