Turning 21 is really no big deal
Birthday brings on adulthood; just another step to next milestone

By all accounts, I absolutely wasted Spring Break. I spent it not in a traditional hub of hedonism, but in ho-hum Columbia, Mo. It’s a town so diametrically opposed to Cancun or Padre that I might as well have bought a ticket to Port Barrow, Alaska. The sun managed to worm its way out periodically, allowing me just enough light to visit such famous Columbia hot spots as my house and the family car.

Here’s the really bad part, though. During Spring Break, I celebrated a birthday, THE birthday, the big 2-1. I didn’t exactly celebrate it in the traditional sense. By that I mean passed out on the bathroom floor face down in fluids both bodily and alcoholic. Not only did I find this type of behavior unhealthy and unsanitary, but also frightfully clichéd. Get “faced on your 21st? Who on earth would want to do that?”

Apparently, a lot of people, including this intrepid columnist. Try as I might I just couldn’t resist that 21 oz. (oh wonderful irony!) bottle of Asahi Super Dry Beer at a Japanese restaurant. Think the Japanese have mastered electronic equipment and economy class automobiles? Well, I’m glad to report they’ll soon be passing us in the beer department.

But as I was sipping my Super Dry Beer, I still had a bitter taste in my mouth, despite the beer’s smooth aftertaste and general sense of super-dryness. In fact, I was barely even noticing the beer. I wasn’t drunk with euphoria; I was nursing a seriously full mug of the blues.

From the moment I woke up on the first day of my 21st year, my legendary powers of denial proved woefully ineffective at suppressing this feeling of dread. I woke up, showered, brushed my teeth and had breakfast as if it was just any other day (well, except for the whole “having breakfast” part — I usually skip that unnecessary meal for more necessary sleep). I know that I should’ve been thinking “I’m 21 — I can drink!” But instead, the only thought running through my head was “I’m 21 — crap.”

Let’s face it: If 21 didn’t mean that we were now eligible to drink alcohol, three scores and one year wouldn’t amount to much, would it? By all respects, 21 should be one of those in-between ages that buffer the milestone birthdays. For example, at 16, you get to drive — the “Gimme the Keys” year. At 18, you get to buy cigarettes and vote — the “Gimme a Pack of Camels and a Ballot” year. And at 20, you’re … well, 20, and we all know that any number with a zero in it is usually a big deal.

The ability to buy beer is the only thing that separates 21 from 19, the birthday where nothing really significant happens. You just get a year older, a year closer to the next milestone. What must’ve made my stomach churn so much that first day of being 21 is the fact that the birthdays that follow are all going to be in-between ones. I came to the startling realization that nothing much is going to happen until 30. And I’m not exactly marking X’s on my calendar in anticipation of that one.

I think another thing that sent chills down my spine that day was the fact that I’ve hurtled headlong to adulthood. Except for the ability to actually grow facial hair, I really don’t consider myself any different than I was when I was 17. And in a lot of ways, I’m not. I certainly still act the way I did when I was 17 — meaning I act like a 12 year old. I may technically be an adult, but I still have a lot of things to learn.

My parents, God bless ‘em, still do my taxes. And I’m still not exactly sure of all the capabilities of that mysterious machine in my residence hall room, which I currently use chiefly to write papers and check up on how bad I’m doing in my NCAA Tournament pool. Is this how a 21-year-old is supposed to function in this modern world?

Even small details like my plane ticket back home caused a small amount of grief in me. When I was little, plane tickets seemed like the most indecipherable little slips of paper ever created, filled to the brim with bizarre numbers and letters that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. I was more than willing for a parent to handle all that mess. Now I walk up to the counter and hand the tickets over myself. Granted, I still have no idea what most of those little numbers and letters mean, but at least I know enough not to care about them as much.

So I guess I figured out the mystery of airplane tickets, but I suppose I have a few mysteries left to solve about this whole adulthood thing. And it might take a couple more in-between birthdays to sort them out. Oh well. Growing up is hard to do. Gimme a beer.

Jack Bullion is a junior English major from Columbia, Mo.
He can be reached at (j.w.bullion@student.tcu.edu).

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