Birthday musings

I just had a birthday over the weekend. The number isn't important, it's not a landmark birthday and I'm at that point where a highschool kid thinks I'm ancient, but I'd be laughed at for calling myself old. I'm feeling kind of weird about the time passing, though, because I'm not sure where I should be at this point. I've got a college degree that I don't use, and my current job doesn't require a degree. Most of my peers (careerwise) are 20+ years older than I am, but my peers (age and educationwise) have much higher level careers than I do. (That comes from the failed teaching career- nothing like starting over in your mid-twenties.) A lot of people are surprised to hear that I have three children ("You look too young to have three kids!") What does that mean?! Too young to have three children? If I had only had my daughter, she'd still be six years old right now, would I be too young to have one child? That makes no sense to me. There's a new song out called 1985 from a band called Bowling for Soup. The chorus is sort of a musical flashback ("Bruce Springsteen, Madonna/Way before Nirvana/There was U2 and Blondie/Music still on MTV/Her two kids in highschool/Tell her that she's uncool/She's still preoccupied with 19-19-1985") I wouldn't go back to 1985 for anything- I I had glasses and a retainer, I couldn't attract any boy's attention, I felt dumb because I was getting the teacher who liked to remind me how smart my sister was (she is, but so am I, and her intelligence is not indicative of mine), I got teased for being flat chested and I cried at the drop of a hat (some things never change.) But if you'd have told me in 1985 that I would be driving a minivan, working as a secretary (an executive one, but a secretary nonetheless), and that I would consider 11:00pm bedtime and 6:00 wake-ups as "late," I'd have chosen to stay frozen in time.