Oh, and by the way

I've had a birthday. I realize this happens every year and is not in itself particularly remarkable, but I think this one was significant for the fact that I no longer have any claim to the phase of life known as mid-twenties.  At 27 my grasp upon it was slippery at best, but now, a year later, I've been officially kicked off the team. I'm in the 28-30 crowd.

I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge what this means. As a 28-year-old I'm now older than a significant number of music stars ever became--I guess this means I've passed the cut-off date for rock-n-roll. If I took up drugs, tight skirts and loud music now I'd be seen as pathetic and rather disgusting--a cry for attention from a has-been who never had-been. MTV is not trying to rock my vote anymore--no journalistic article, even a really patronising one would describe me as a girl, or even a young woman now--just a woman. I'm one of those Real Adults you hear about as a youth and secretly fear--a responsible adult doing responsible things with money, property, community and nation.

Except I don't really have any property, and aside from the pension plan at work and repaying loans for my MA I'm not doing much with money that most 20 year olds aren't already doing. (Reader, if you're a 20 year old with an advanced degree, I'm impressed but a little baffled.) As far as community goes, I work with technical theatre students for a living, so while I may be taking a bit more responsibility for their health and safety than they are, I'm hardly in a position to be a good influence on the next generation. Seriously, they're artists. If you're too overtly well-meaning toward them they bite.

I voted early in the US election by email and now get to sit tight and watch it play out. As much as Ward Cleaver of the Mormon Party scares me, there's not a whole lot I can do or say from the UK that would impact anyone's vote--ex-pats around here are already going to vote for Obama, I'm preaching to the choir when I sign a petition, and no one reads this journal without already knowing me and my views pretty well. (Hi Mom!) Romney has the cold dead eyes of a killer, but a lot of Americans apparently look for that in their leadership so who am I to burden them with sanity? Meanwhile Cameron is a self-aggrandising nonce who is striving to cripple the NHS so he can eventually justify dissolving it and giving his cronies in the private insurance industry some coin, but that's blatant to every nurse, cabbie and coal miner in the UK and no one seems able to do anything about it--especially me, as I can't actually vote here. 

I may be 28, but I'm just as left-wing, pro-choice, anti-theistic, counter-patriarchal, feminist, state-education supportively idealistic as any naïvely youthful 27 year old. Hear me roar.