Not born yesterday

Fifty-five trips around the sun qualified my to sign up for an AARP card, but I didn’t want to pay the dues…

There was a bright canary yellow postcard in my mailbox yesterday, a color obviously intended to catch my eye and attention. Return address was to the DMV, which, coupled with the particularly insistent color, sent me to wondering what I had done that I wasn’t supposed to do that I thought I’d gotten away with but hadn’t.

I flipped it over to the message side to find out.

Seems the state’s motor vehicle monitors had caught me getting older. My driver’s license is set to expire. On my birthday. If I want to keep using the streets, roads, and highways for the purpose which they were intended, I need to renew before that legal tally wheel clicks over one more time.mak

Now there’s nothing particularly significant or life changing about this coming birth anniversary. It generates interest on the part of the State of Minnesota only so much as it is the five-year multiple of the issue date of my first full-fee adult license and is, therefore, the next opportunity for the state to re-fee my mortaring privilege. That a trip to the DMV is all that promises to make the day one to remember says all that needs to be said of the significance of adult birthdays.

Now I can say with near absolute certainty that the day of my emergence as a free-living, air-breathing, fully-gestated organism was a moment well-remembered by everyone intimately involved (myself, a couple of overworked nurses and a bored obstetrician being noteworthy exceptions), and from the third anniversary of that event on for a number of years, I found that day to be a particularly significant milestone. Getting older was resulting in ever increasing physical capabilities, widening independence, and ever greater, more exciting opportunities to have fun. Birthdays marked milestones and for a kid, milestones come around pretty regularly … right up until I hit sixteen. Once I could drive a car, drop out of high school, and = at least in theory – legally have sex, birthdays just weren’t what they used to be.

That said, I’d have to point to two exceptions … 1970 and 1973 … mostly because other stuff was happening that I had no control over.

Federal legislation made 1970 a significant birth anniversary. On June 30, 1970, I turned 18 and, according to the law of the land, was now eligible for induction into the armed services of the United States of America and thence obligated to serve wherever the Commander in Chief or his subordinates saw fit to send me … including a free-fire zone somewhere in the Republic of Vietnam — not a locale where I wished to spend — or end — my days. June 30, 1970, was also significant in that recent federal legislation had set that date as the final day of eligibility for at II-S student deferment — a provision of the Selective Service law that held the draft board at bay so long as the holder was satisfactorily enrolled as an undergraduate student in a qualified post-secondary institution — making it a profound incentive for academic accomplishment. That combination of significance resulted in what probably ranks as the most diligently completed paperwork of my life — along with my application to Winona State College — the institution careful research assured me was the one where I was most likely to be enrolled and stay enrolled with the hope that the war — or the conscription law — would end before my academic career.

As a side note, turning 18 in 1970 had further, more life enhancing, significance. At that time the legal age for drinking beer in Wisconsin was, yup, 18, and both Caledonia and Winona were quite convenient to Badgerland. It would be three years before the legal age to purchase and consume alcohol in Minnesota would drop to 18 — on June 30, 1973 — my 21st birthday… That being memorable enough in itself, the poignancy of it was really driven home when that evening I dropped into The Four Queens, one of my favorite Winona watering holes, and for the first time ever, the bartender insisted on seeing an ID — with the wry comment, “I’m finally going to find out how old you are, Jerome…”

It would be a long wait until the next big day. Turning 35 had potential, but only if I were running for president,,,and I wasn’t. Fifty-five trips around the sun qualified my to sign up for an AARP card, but I didn’t want to pay the dues so I didn’t.

Next stop was 65, which was a biggee since signing up for Medicare meant that for the first time since I was 18 I pretty much didn’t have to have a job to see a doctor.

Best birthday gift since that II-S.