Happy birthday to me.
God, I’m old. And it’s only my 30th birthday.
Any readers of this blog would scoff at my insistence that 30 is old; problem is, us millennials have been prepped to believe that anything beyond their twenties is positively ancient.
I was watching ‘Black Books’, the 2000 British comedy, a few days ago. Somehow the topic of Bill Bailey’s age came up in conversation with my fiancé (who should, by rights, be my husband by now; thanks to Covid, goodness knows when that will happen).
It turns out that in the year 2000, Bill Bailey (Manny) was 35 years old. Tamsin Grieg (Fran) was 34 years old. And Dylan Moran (Bernard), surprisingly, was only a mere 29 years old.
My fiancé and I continued watching in stunned silence. Not so long ago, these figures seemed to be ancient figureheads of maturity – proper adults, with proper responsibilities. It seems farfetched that I am in their age range (or in my fiancé’s case, older than their age range).
And yet, this denial of antiquity is completely understandable. Newspapers repeatedly refer to millennials as some strange adolescent concept outside the laws of natural aging; neither children (as they are old enough to be burdened with a mortgage, assuming they are somehow able to scrape a deposit together for a house purchase) nor adults (as they are portrayed as lacking judgment or the ability to case an informed vote, and apparently need to be wrapped in cotton wool, layered in bubble-wrap, and locked away in a safe space).
And it is not just the media’s portrayal of millennials – it is a belief that seems to be held by higher-ups in professional jobs (or, at least, my experience in law firms leads me to believe that millennials are regarded as little more than glorified University students). No wonder my perception of the world is fucked.
Anyway, happy birthday to me, and here’s to another year of trying to determine my place in society.
Diary of an Autistic Lawyer 