Nineteen.

Nineteen is a fundamentally useless birthday, now that I think about it. It doesn't connote any special rights or privileges. I'm past the point in my life when a year was some amazing milestone I never thought I'd pass, but I'm not yet to point where every additional birthday is a curse and sign of my inexorable march toward death. I mean, gifts huzzah, but still... there was a time when a birthday was the equivalent of leveling up, I would get an array of new skills and abilities and abskillities, or at least another few minutes tacked onto my bedtime, but there's nothing for turning nineteen. And it's right smack-dab in the midst of several important birthdays: eighteen, where I gained the ability to buy tobacco and pornography (even though I don't smoke tobacco or pornography); twenty, which in one of those decade-days which will come to define age as a while in years to come, once I get past 35 (I reckon about eighty is when I'll go back to individual years again, as each additional one becomes a significant accomplishment); and of course twenty-one, which is best known as the age when not drinking magically transforms me from a pansy who's afraid to live a little into an adult who's afraid to live a little. Like magic!

Ach. Crivins, even. At least I get presents. And maybe cake! Y'all got me cake, right? I asked for it, remember? I'll... just... you know... wait here for it. Yep... waitin' here for my cake. Whenever you're ready... just bring on the cake.

I do like cake.