perennials

I made it to the age of 20! Had I lived in Victorian London, I would probably be dead, or at least coughing myself to death, by now. Oh wait I AM coughing myself to death. Isn't that ironic? Isn't it ironic that I didn't locate the irony before labelling this an ironic situation? Isn't irony dead, or at least assimiliated so fully into daily life, that even our existence is an uncanny and conceptually strange condition that some might label... ironic?

Just kidding! I meant nothing of what I said earlier! However, I am sincere about the statement, "I made it to the age of 20!" because in the years preceding this even before conception, I had many close brushes with an abrupt and tragic end. For example, I had once choked on a pineapple sweet, and somone held me upside down by my ankles to shake it out. I always get flashbacks of this even as I, against my better judgement, ride on roller coasters, because G-forces are very reminiscent of this near-death experience. (Interesting, however, that G-forces thrill because they ARE near-death experiences in themselves.) Take another instance - while holidaying with my family, I swam to the deep end and promptly began to drown. My dad was a swimming champion in his youth, and this is why I am not in a vegetal state today, narrating my life's misfortunes through a feeding tube and an Eighties Macintosh voice.On a more fundamental level, my mom nearly resigned herself to a life of childlessness ("barren" is a really harsh word! But it's funny because of the agricultural connotation. Am I alienating you with my humour?) but then she had me. Also, of course, who can forget the time I was rudely hit by a car while running across the road in the dark of night? Being wheeled around the A&E was so much fun. Hospital gowns are comfy!

Birthdays are weird! It's like an anniversary of your birth, and there's cake, AND THERE ARE CANDLES ON THE CAKE (WHO THOUGHT OF THAT?), and people clap as they sing the birthday song while staring at you, and every time they sing that song my mind is infused with an awareness that it's copyrighted, and then I start to think about intellectual property and public history and the cultural consciousness of mankind, and before you know it, someone's helping me up from the ground. It's just really weird.