The "F" Word...

No, not fahrfegnugen.

Today, I arrive at the "f" word. The big four-oh.

Yep, that's right: today, I'm forty years old.

Holy.

Freakin'.

Crow.

When did this happen?!? How?!?

I mean, one day, I'm eighteen, graduating high school, and the future is laid out in front of me, a wide-open buffet of years and experiences, and then all of a sudden, I'm a forty-year-old single dad whose buffet has shrunk down to a plate of that blue jell-o they serve in senior cafeterias.

I hate blue jell-o!

All day, folks have been reminding me that forty is just a number. That forty is the new thirty. That you're only as old as you feel.

Well that's all fine and good, but there's one bit of crucial information that makes this a bit different:

This is ME we're talkin' about here!

Forty is just another number when it's someone else. When I turn forty, it's a bit more cataclysmic.

Forty is the new thirty? A rose by any other name...

As old as I feel?

I'm doomed.

Then again, on the other hand, turning forty isn't so bad.

When you get right down to it, the number forty, when applied to birthdays, means "not dead".

I'm ok with this.

I've had forty years worth of experiences--some good, some not so much--that make me who I am today.

And who I am is a man who wants another forty years or more.

Who I am is a man who loves his children more than anything else in the world, and wants to be around long enough to see them have kids.

So, happy birthday to me, and I'll take many more, if I can get 'em.

Plus, as long as I can get my aging fingers around a fork, I get to eat carrot cake today, which is...precious...to me.

My Precious...

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Thanks for reading my ranting,

Forty-year-old Brad