Last night of 27

Well, tomorrow is my birthday and I still don't feel grown up.

I remember as a kid getting all excited the day before my birthday. I often became so hyper about the impending birthday that I couldn't sleep and started feeling sick and squirmy. A lot of the excitement was admittedly about the prospect of cake, presents and parties. I generally started planning my birthday party theme and birthday cake* a good 6 months in advance (as soon as Xmas was over, it was time to start thinking about the birthday). Dad used to make these incredibly cool customised games for whatever theme the birthday party was. There was usually an adventure game which was kind of like a LARP meets a pick-a-path now that I think about it. There would be illustrated booklets stuck on the walls over the house with numbers. All the kids had characters and you can to read the story and then there would be a choice about where you had to go next. Quite often there was a puzzle you had to solve or a challenge. Victory results in candy prizes. It was so good.

The theme was generally extended through other more traditional party games like pass-the-parcel, the mask or outfit you had to wear for the chocolate eating game and the musical chairs variant we had 'Here comes the keeper'.

However, I like to think that my love of birthdays was not purely mercenary. I loved the idea of growing up - getting physically bigger, becoming smarter and wiser, learning more about life and the world. I felt impatient to get older and become better. I think I associated aging with 'levelling up' (I guess I did start playing D&D at the tender age of 5). It was as though having a birthday meant that I should get to roll a +1D6 more hit points and become more powerful.

I would always run to the mirror on the morning of my birthday to see if I had noticeably changed. This continued through my teenage years, the thoughts were maybe a little more sophisticated but it was the same idea. That somehow turning a year older would make me a better person.

Somewhere in your twenties that notion starts to fade. I don't feel appreciably smarter, wiser, tougher or more powerful in teaching-fu than I did a year ago. If I try to look back objectively to say 2 1/2 years ago when I started teaching, I can see that I have improved in that I feel more confident and relaxed about it. Maybe the whole process slows down as you age - it takes longer to progress to the next step in your development.

Hmm, distracted by husband comments from the other side of the room. Random. Sometimes statements made by your spouse as he works at a neighbouring computer can be unexpected.

Example: "Awesome. You can download Tony Blair speeches."

Ok, it turns out he was only wanting them for sample speeches for school but it was unexpected nonetheless. At least it wasn't Tony Blair images he was excited about downloading. That would be freaky and gross**.

* Our family had this excellent Children's Birthday Cake Recipe Book and I would spend countless hours pouring over the pictures and selecting which cake I wanted. There were animal cakes (I had the rubber ducky and the pig), candy store shaped cakes, fairytale castles cakes and gingerbread houses, and lots of other amazingly pretty yet delicious cakes.

**More disturbing than having a pin-up of Margaret Thatcher even. At least she had balls. He is like a neutered Thatcher.