Just A Number?

I have never been great at mathematics.  Basic, rudimentary arithmetic is within my limited sphere of understanding, however.  I get the concept of the whole number and what can be done with it; beyond that, I still must rely on counting on my fingers like a small child or, better yet, rush immediately to a calculator to accomplish more complex numeric tasks.  In general, though, I try to avoid anything related to numbers.  Including the number forty-one.

I’m not sure what exactly it is about my turning forty-one on Sept. 14 that creeps me out so much. It’s not a case of my dreading the moment I first pry open my eyes in bed on that morning or being worried that someone will viciously send me a bouquet of black balloons.  Surely there’s no evil clown waiting for me to set my feet on the floor just so it can snatch me under the bed and snarl “Happy birthday” through clenched teeth frozen in a fanged grin.  Whatever it is, though, I’m struggling to make peace with the concept of getting another year older and not knowing what – or who — I want to be when I grow up.

I should interject here that I’m fully aware that I have a masochistic tendency to look back to the past too much.  To people and friends I have known and lost, to experiences, to memories, to mistakes and failings, even to favorite old songs and movies and television programs, and so on.  (Which is probably why, even now, I revel in watching old kiddie stuff including “H.R. Pufnstuf”, “The Secrets of Isis” and “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”.)   I have been that way for years, but I don’t know if I could identify the precise moment when that began … not without therapy, anyway.  For me to live in the here-and-now, in the present moment, is uphill all the way. 

I know it’s probably not very healthy psychologically to constantly dwell on the past at the expense of fully realizing one’s potential now.   Perhaps it’s the daunting challenge of actually realizing one’s potential that stands like a giant black monolith in the path to the future.  Maybe it’s the prospect of being out in the open, exposed, vulnerable to all the slings and arrows and responsibilities of adulthood that pushes us back into the corner of our psyches where parents still tuck us safely into our beds at night and everything “out there” is still an unfamiliar, distant mystery too large for our infantile pea-brains to process. 

Maybe there’s a fear of getting older and losing touch with the memories of things that brought us innocent joy in our childhoods.  Or maybe we just still really like to watch Bugs Bunny cartoons because the bright colors and anthropomorphized animals capture our attention spans for a few brief, shining moments.  (Insert me shrugging my shoulders here as a punctuation device.)

There’s an expression that says life begins at forty.  I don’t know that mine did.  Maybe it did, and I just didn’t notice because I was too busy looking back nostalgically and trying to retroactively live out situations that I now wish could have transpired differently.  Perhaps life can begin at forty-one instead, setting aside a delayed adolescence in favor of a delayed adulthood.  I certainly hope so, because I’m sure that I’m missing out on a lot of fully-realized experiences and accomplishments now.

Just don’t try to pull a fast one on me and put trick candles on my birthday cake this year, whosoever decides to surprise me.  I can only blow out forty-one of them once.