Birthday Plans (Richmond, VA)

When one reaches a certain age (mine?), one may hope to be forgiven for memory lapses, a lack of patience, and more. I ask your forbearance and your forgiveness, both in advance and in retrospect, because I can't remember if I've told you this before...

I was getting physical therapy a while back for my broken wrist or bad knee or some other body part gone wrong when I complained about the number of visits I'd made and problems I'd been having. "I thought 50 was the new 30," I said.

"No," my 20-something therapist replied. "Thirty is the new 50."

The thought is depressing. Not that I'm 50 or anything.

Don't ask, don't tell. That's my policy when it comes to age. Oh, yeah. One more thing -- when someone asks you to guess his/her age, subtract 25 years from whatever age you think is correct.

So now that I've completed my minus 25 years, I'm swiping a plan from someone who mentioned hers in a magazine or newspaper article: I'm going to do one new thing for every year of my life. (Translation: If I were 30, I'd have to do 30 new things.) Notice that I didn't say that it has to be something good; it just must be something I've never done before.

I'm not even listing the new stuff before I do it, although I will try to plan some things. (Go to NYC for a coupla days in the spring? Guadalajara this summer?) I will keep a running list once I accomplish something, however. But I'm not necessarily going to tell you what I've been up to....