One goes through an underwater treasure trove of emotions on turning 30. This blog has been testament to that fact, but what they don't tell one (haha -- I am the butler from Remains of the Day) is that 31 follows and, no kidding around, that's for real old. There's no treasure trove of emotions to go through at 31. It's the real deal, and it doesn't even merit a blog post, but you know me, raging against the dying of the light and all that.
Next month I turn 31, and now I know for an incontrovertible fact, that I will never play professional sports and have the chance to inject anabolic steroids into my buttocks. I will never start a band, so if I mainline Jack Daniels, it's just a sad cry for help. And I have no business weighing in on the looks/existences of teenage starlets (hahaha -- just kidding; Miley Cyrus looks like a supremely caffeintated troll and has all the talent of a Speak & Spell; whereas Evan Rachel Wood is smoking hot and hates her parents like they were axe murderers). Anyway, 31, which I turn in a few weeks, not 30, is where the existential crisis ends. I am growing old, and I know it, but it's okay.
Still, this past weekend, as I took a walk around Oakland with blog reader Thumbu Sammy, my physical decreptitude was brought to my attention in a way that was, well, not so okay. We passed by a kid at at the bus stop, some sullen teenager, who asked me for 50 cents. I said, "Sorry, man," and as I walked away felt a torrent of rage: "You ain't got 50 cents?! You ain't got 50 cents, Rasheed Wallace bald-spot-having motherfucker?!"
I got clowned. I got clowned for being old and for suffering one consequence of age, but what's worse is that 'Sheed, picture of virility and all things manly, got clowned too. We got clowned by some kid who didn't even have bus fare.
