"YOU PUT YOUR WEED IN THERE"

In two weeks it will be the eve of my birthday. Most of the time I don't pay much attention to how many years old I am, I like to think I'm not aging, obviously I'm wrong. But as soon as July starts, it seems a clock begins to tick in my head... louder and louder every day, reminding me that soon I will be leaving another age number behind. This year is especially bad because I will turn 39! This next year will be my last in a decade, after this year I will no longer be able to say, "I'm in my thirties..." or "I'm a thirty-something mom of two..." etc, etc. I had a really hard time with this same issue ten years ago when I was turning 29. You'd think that 30 would have been harder on me, but it wasn't! Besides, 20, 30, 40, are all milestones, right? You've made it to start another decade! I've done a little something each milestone that I'd thought about doing for many years beforehand. Something a little, shall we say, daring? On the edge? Unexpected? So to help me think forward to my next decade milestone, instead of dwelling on the fact that this year is 39, I'm looking for the next celebratory ritual I should partake of on my big 40. I'm pretty sure no one (maybe Jeff) knows what I did when I turned 20, and only a select few know what my turning 30 symbol was, but I'm up for suggetions for this next one.

Here's the only catch... if it's illegal, I just won't be able to do it. I've thought, on more than one occasion, that it might be fun to see what happens when one smokes a joint (scandalous, I know) and in the past, when I was younger and thinner, I thought it might be liberating to streak a public beach. But I have this hang-up about getting into trouble... in fact I used to be mortified when my mom would park the family station wagon in a handicap stall at the grocery store, claiming that having to drag seven kids along to get groceries WAS a handicap. I'd murmur under my breath, "Having to win back seven kids from Child Protective Services after you've been hauled off to jail seems like a bigger handicap to me!"