I spent a lot of time last year telling myself a lie.
“Brian,” I said like a father to a son. “Don’t worry about turning 40. It’s no big deal. Wait until the hair grows out of your ears like tentacles. Then freak out. But this? This will be easy!”
Then I turned 40 and spent most of the year staring at myself in the mirror, looking for ear hair tentacles.
It wasn’t vanity. It was the realization that it was all slipping away. That of all the things I can control, time is not one of them. I can save up money. I can give up regular beer for carrot beer. I can combine yoga and tai chi with self-inflicted acupuncture, all while dangling upside down from the ceiling.
But while it will make me healthier (or kill me!) it won’t slow things down.
Forty made me freak out.
Isn’t that what those milestone, decade-ending ages do? They usher us into a new, uncharted realm. They dispatch something we were very comfortable with — our 30s, our 40s, our 50s, our 60s. They leave us pondering what it all means, and really, where it all went.
But a wonderful thing happened this week: 41 showed up. Oh, wonderful 41. Where have you been all my life?
It’s a fresh start. Where 40 was the end of something, 41 is just the beginning. A renewal. A chance to be young again. The baby of the 40-year-olds. Like a new recruit. A junior space cadet. No clue where I’m going and no hurry to get there. I have the whole decade to do it!
My wife has been asking what I want for my birthday. I honestly didn’t know. Some gray socks. Peanuts. Ziploc baggies with Star Wars characters on them.
Then it came to me: Something to mark this return to youth. Something that would take me back to my childhood.
I want to go see the “The LEGO Movie!”
You know, the animated kids’ movie about a world made up of nothing but click-together plastic blocks.
As a boy, my brother and I had cornered the market on LEGOs, amassing a bounty so large that we had to move our beds into the living room just to store them all. Giant tubs were filled with thousands of them. We had every shape, size and color. We built colossal cities, fought epic wars and came very close to sustained fusion in a homemade LEGO nuclear reactor. (It melted!)
When I think of my youth, I think of wedgies, the crusts cut off my sandwiches and LEGOs. And now, just when I needed it most, comes this movie that encapsulates my childhood and marks my new beginning. (Plus ridiculously expensive popcorn!)
So goodbye 40. And hello 41. We’re going to get along just fine. (Now, I wonder if my wife will also cut the crusts off my sandwiches.)