LIFE IS LESS LIKE A BOWL OF CHERRIES AND MORE LIKE A BIG 'OL ONION


So I gots a birfday coming up. How old you ask? Old enough. And there’s nothing like smart alecky remarks from a nephew to drive a few more nails into the coffin. I was out at my sister and brother in laws house a week ago or so sun bathing and making good use of their backyard pool.

While I chaperoned my nephew in the hot-tub he say’s to me “uncle Matt! You got a HUGE belly!” Rose was laying in the sun nearby listening in and trying not to laugh. Well, I let that one go. Later I remind my niece that she has a birthday coming up and that we have birthdays that are only a couple days apart. I ask her to guess how old I’m going to be but she doesn’t want to take a stab at it even though I give her a hint that I’m close in age to her dad (she’s opts out of situations like that now in fear that she’ll say the wrong thing like the time she asked my mother in law why her teeth are so green…snicker…) so then my nephew pipes in again and asks “hey uncle Matt!” they always yell stuff ya know “are you like, dead-old?!” I say no and that “dead-old” is reserved for grandma and grandpas. Then he asks “are you like 80!?”. Nice. The kid’s only 4 so I’ll give him a break. Even though I get the distinct feeling that he’s fully aware that he’s bustin my balls.

Well, I don’t have a complex about the age thing but there’s definitely something about crossing over the 30 yo threshold that definitely feels a lot different than yer mid-late 20s. Maybe it’s that you rehash the same old crap in conversation/thought life that you used to mill around a decade previous. Only instead of life being like a series of fresh ideas fueling you along, it’s more like life starts to resemble an onion. Layer after stinky layer of the same thing (this is how I explained it to someone lately anyway) I don’t mean that in a morbid kind of way at all. It’s just that life becomes more complicated and simple all at the same time. Isn’t life just the same constant with tiny variations of the same themes? I’m still pretty amazed at all the layers but I think I’m kinda starting to get what the onion’s all about.