Last night while walking in 98 degree weather, only slightly down from today's brutal temperature, I mentioned to my friend Barbara that being 30 years old really refers to the span between 28 and 32. We're not definitively 30; once we pass 29 it feels more like we're part of a range of years. Some days we're going to feel like 28 and others more like 31 or 32. Thirty just seems amorphous in a way that 21 or 16 did not.
What does this have to do with Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants? Here's the first paragraph of the novel, which I just read for the first time only 20 minutes ago:
"I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other.
When you're five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties you know how old you are. I'm twenty-three, you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties something strange starts to happen. It's a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm --- you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you're not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it" (5).
So B, apparently my theory IS universal, minus the doomsday spin. Whatever. Happy early birthday, kiddo!
love,
a(the other spring chicken)
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