and it breaks my heart, and it breaks my heart

There is a gym where I work. Earlier when I visited the restroom I could hear music coming through the door to the showers and the gym. This is not unusual. However, on this occasion, rather than the typical hits of the eighties and nineties, the strands of Regina Spektor's Fidelity came wafting through the closed door.

The incongruity of this cannot be overstated.

to see her throw a fit borderlining conniption

In just under a month it will be my birthday. I'm turning twenty-five. I will be a full quarter of a century old. And on that day I will be as solidly in my mid-twenties as I'm going to get. There's an argument to be made that after the age of twenty-one your birthdays stop mattering so much, unless they're nice round numbers. Twenty-five is not as far from twenty-four as eighteen was from seventeen.

It has been many years since I've had a birthday party. Mid-March was March vacation time for those seven years when I was in prep school, and then Spring Break time during my four years of college. I, as you may know, spent my twenty-first birthday at home in Connecticut having my wisdom teeth removed. That's how much of a non-event I have allowed my birthday to become.

Don't get me wrong. Most of these birthdays I've spent with my family, and they've always done something nice. Presents, and usually a cake, and it felt good. When you grow up with three siblings your birthday is the one day of the year that you're allowed to make all about you. And then as you grow older and mature it seems as though you're expected to do that less and less. After all, its only a birthday.

Thing is? Whether its true or not I feel as though I haven't really truly celebrated my birthday in over a decade. And I'm turning twenty-five. Twenty-five! The quarter life crisis! A quick look at Wikipedia proves my conviction that this age is signifanct. Twenty five is five to the second power. It is also the smallest number that is the sum of two squares (three and four.) If I were a marriage, this would be my Silver Jubilee. I will become old enough to be elected to the US House of Representatives. In the Pokémon Pokédex, twenty-five is Pikachu's I.D. number. Pikachu!

So I'm thinking about having a birthday party. Nothing huge. Just my friends, and some drinks and some food, and quite possibly a movie. Probably the Friday after my birthday, as the 21st falls on a Wednesday this year. And for once I'm actually planning something in advance. Four full weeks notice, people. Mark your calendars.