no more sloppy seconds?

i was sitting around chatting with some folks the other day and something about our age group occurred to us…

…not a whole lot of “firsts” left…and never mind the milestones!

think about it – when you were little, you couldn’t WAIT till that next birthday. then ten was coming and you felt all cool ’cause you’d be in the double digits. then you wanted to be thirteen so you could be a teenager…than sixteen so you could drive…then eighteen so you could be an “adult” (whatever the fuck that is). then at twenty-one you could drink a cold beer on a hot day…legally.

then what? twenty-five you can rent a car and your insurance goes down? then comes thirty…forty…the “milestones” stop having descriptions attached – just numbers. i mean, i turn forty next summer. am i looking forward to it? not sure…am i counting the moments till it happens? not so much. not that i MIND getting forty, but it’s just that’s my next milestone? i didn’t die? how the fuck is that supposed to feel like an accomplishment?

and then there’s the firsts you go through in your youth – first bike ride away from the house, first time you have pizza, first kiss, first date, first time the folks leave you with the house for the night, which leads to first time you deal with the cops, first time you drive, first defensive driving class for going seventy in a school zone, first wreck, etc, etc, etc…sure, not ALL of them are pleasant “firsts”.

but they’re FIRSTS, by god!

what firsts do i have between now and forty i could accomplish? the easy ones are the really bad ones (first DWI, first time arrested, first time shot) but i can’t, for the life of me, think of any GOOD ones i could do in the next ten months. first wife, first kid? not bloody likely – so what comes to mind for you guys? what could i do, before the big four-oh next juneteenth, that could be positive? frighteningly, i’m at a loss…