Cruising into antiquity

By the time you read this I will be sailing away in celebration of yet another 39th birthday. Sort of a "Kirby Cruises into Antiquity" moment. It's a birthday-o-rama of raucous proportions, even if the bluebird of happiness dive bombs my birthday cake.

Fortunately, I'm not on the auction block at Sotheby's . . . yet, even though the Antiques Roadshow has their eyes on me. After Shirley and the Good Ship Lollipop, I represent the era of baby boomers who are bankrupting the ship and have turned Shirley into Stan.

No matter how you do the math, I plan to be eternally 39, just like Jack Benny and Joan Rivers, with a little help from her friends.

Today you could probably carbon date me as a postmentalpausalzoic specimen, specializing in faturation instead of maturation, with notes of cabernet infusions. Residue of Hershey's Kiss imprints might appear in the bone marrow, and if they ask me who Ben and Jerry are, I will tell them they are old boyfriends.

They'll be hardpressed to locate any silicone and Botox, although after four years at UCLA in the '70s, who knows what could have found its way into my DNA.

Oh, to be a kid again. Birthdays were great parties, when dad pulled out the air compressor and inflated enough balloons to float the fete over Lake Superior. There were slumber parties, when we dressed like beatniks, picked licorice out of our braces, squeezed zits and argued over which Beatle was cuter. When I turned 21 my friends took me dancing and gave me a gold bracelet. When I turned 40, my friends gave me a mirror that laughed wickedly at my image, a target with my ex-husband's derriere in the center and a gigantic tube of preparation H.

I think we'll forget about gifts, and that's why I'm just sailing away into senility.

You know, I have never really understood people who hate their birthdays. Do you? Oh, we're all getting older; we're drooping, blooping, dripping and drying, but that's the way it is, baby, so face the music and drink. After all, there's nothing you can do to stop the process, and birthdays are a good excuse for a party where you get to call the shots.

So you don't like the bags under your eyes and your droopy derriere? Honey, get a grip. There's a reason our eyesight fades; there's a reason that magnifying mirror no longer magnifies squat; there's a reason my glasses look like the Hubble telescope. It's so you can't really see those dreadful things. Really. As long as I see well enough to draw only one eyebrow over each eye, I'm ahead of the game.

When my mother was 60, she took up tap dancing. I like that idea, although if my kids read this, they will laugh themselves silly. Tap dancing sounds more appealing than Power Yoga or Cardio TNT, and I could never really do that "shuffle ball change" thing very well, so it's time to learn. I wonder if there is an "old broads tap dancing studio" with a hotline to 911 and a very well-reinforced floor. And an air conditioner that makes polar bears envious.

At my office, they just installed more memory in my computer. I was jealous. Why, I asked, can't you install a little extra memory over here? They just laughed.

As we know, "In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."

Anyone up for tap dancing? You can reach Elizabeth Kirby at kirby@theacorn.com.

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