Roxy Hammond

I was one of the 10 youngest people in my graduating class. Having a birthday on June 9, I have grown accustomed to watching everyone else do the fun things before me. Senior year, I had to watch as everyone else became legal adults and could consent to things without a parental signature, buy cigarettes (not that it was important to me) and go to an infamous juice bar in Salem-which is only 30 minutes from Mitchell (my hometown), mind you.

That sucked. Yet, nothing has sucked more than the age I am right now: 20 and three-fourths. The days are dwindling as I can see the light at the end of the tunnel coming closer and closer. The people I’m running the race with are dropping like flies as their non-summer birthdays come and go.

So here I sit.

Do you want to go downtown, Roxy? Oh wait, never mind. You are but a wee child who still needs their diaper changed.

Or not. But that is how I feel when my slightly-older friends go the bars on a Friday night and I’m stuck at home singing “All By Myself” through my tears.

Is my mentality any different than theirs? My maturity? No! If anything, my maturity level trumps theirs, since I’ve always been an old prude.

But noooo ? I’m not even allowed to go into the bars with them to hang out. I must watch from a distance, i.e. my apartment.

Woe is a 20-year-old. The torment is not this great when you are 17, 18 or 19 ? just 20. Twenty with a late birthday.

Summer birthdays haven’t always treated me badly. I mean, I can go to the water park, have an outdoor party, go the lake, etc. I’ve never had to sit through a long day of class on my birthday, nor did I have to worry about a blizzard. It’s a nice break between Christmas and Christmas. I get presents about every six months, and that’s OK with me!

But of course it has its downfalls too, like my predicament now. Sure, I won’t have snow on my birthday, but right now I have snow and no ability to tromp through it to the bars.

All of you with early birthdays cannot possibly know what I’m talking about. You’re the ones that get to turn 21 and smugly smile at people like me while you say “Oh, you’re not 21? That sucks. Well, I’m going to go to the bars now. I hope you didn’t want to hang out!”

It’s cruel, it really is. The only consolation I have is that I will be celebrating my birthday this year on a beach resort in Southern Mexico during my trip to Oaxaca. Puerto Escondido. Look it up and envy me.

But don’t envy me quite yet. I still have more than two months to go. That’s two months of endless projects, papers and final exams. And two months of even more lonely weekends stuck at home writing columns about the woes of being under 21.

#1.884256:303082223.jpg:roxyhammond_cj.jpg:Roxy Hammond, Sarcastic Cynicisms:Charlie Johnson