Two years ago, I celebrated my 18th birthday by driving to my local polling place, registering to vote, and casting a ballot. That's one of the things I love about Wisconsin, same day registration.
Two days ago, I cast another ballot. Today, I turned twenty.
I believe twenty is an underrated birthday, although not as appealing as gaining the freedom to drive, watch R-rated movies, buy cigarettes, enter casinos, or perchase and consume alcohol, twenty holds a different gift: Maturity.
No longer am I a silly teenager, nor any longer can I read Catcher in the Rye and completely identify with the main character; my childish angst has been replaced by twenty-something confusion, sort of like when you try to take another step when going up the stairs, but discover too late that there isn't one.
The biggest change seems to be a shifted point of reference. Currently, I am in my second year of college. I have not been in a high school classroom for 18 months. When I attended high school, everything I did or thought about related to the high school mold of life: living with my parents, having seven hours of classes every day, highly regimented schedule, etc. By now, that life seems so far away from me, I almost want to question if I actually lived like that, or if that was just a proto-version of myself, still chained inside Plato's Cave (Rest assured, I'm not a philosophy major.) The conversations I get into now almost never make reference to the high-school model of life, and when I tell a story about the past, it tends to be about something over the past 18 months. My scope of reference has a limit, as well as an interest, in the recent past.
Twenty is an age when I realize that I am an adult, because my direct memory begins since I've been Eighteen. Still, twenty-one may have a bigger party.
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