In a couple days, I’ll be thirty-one. Probably not a moment to break out in song or dance or anything remotely interesting, it is, after all, only a number which we we count against other humans with similar numbers in an effort to remind them of our superiority or weakness in the swimming pool of society. I’m not one of those people who really hypes up my birthday when it comes around, because it’s really just another year I’m thankful to be alive in time for whatever is on television, or a new game coming out. I’m easy to please.

But deep down I do remind myself from time-to-time that I am not young anymore. I probably look young, and feel young, even act young mostly compared to my more seasoned friends or co-workers. It’s less of an age component and more of a social component. I am young because I have a decent job with no children, so people expect me to be partying like it’s 1999 and hitting the booze cannon or whatever it is you people do with your spare time.

The trouble is, I am not.

While it is true that we’re on course to start a family, quite literally this weekend as officially goes off birth control, we’ve shot ourselves in the foot mentally over the years. We probably could have started down this path five or more years ago, shortly after we met, and probably be spending this day worrying about a child in kindergarten, but we held off for a long time because we just were not mentally prepared. There was always an excuse, be it money, time, where we were living, money, getting married, money, oh, and money.

I know for a lot of people, money isn’t a barrier. Children just happen, either by accident or on purpose. Many more say you don’t need money to be happy. I tend to agree, but at the same time, I think it is incredibly short-sighted of anyone not to consider the financial impact and responsibility children bring to the equation. I’ve acknowledged that I am not going to be a millionaire, that I will not run with that caste of society that doesn’t bother to ever look down so as to avoid the scourge of land-dwellers beneath them. I focus each day to do my job well enough that I stay where I am, make money, and hope for a promotion or change of position to advance forward. Sure, it’s depressing to know that some people barely lift a finger and get paid exorbitant amounts of money. It’s even harder to hear some people below me don’t work at all and get benefits and freebies from the government. I have opinions about it, sure, but those people aren’t my concern at the end of the day. My family is.

But beyond money, it’s my own personal disposition. I’m not known for being overly emotional, overly caring, or overly anything. When given free time, I sit and watch TV or play games. I don’t do many extra things around unless it’s interesting or necessary. I often feel that some of the delay in our having children stems from the fact that I am not seen as a reliable person around children, that I am not going to care for them or pay attention to them compared to other “Father of the Year” types. I am often compared to another person I used to know, and it bothers me because I don’t believe I am anything like that. It’s true I’ve never dealt with infants, or even little children, because even when my cousins were small, I didn’t play a role in helping watch them, or feed them, or anything like that. Someone else was there. In my teen and adult years, there hasn’t been anyone around me really with kids, and by the time there were a couple, I had no idea what to do with them, and no inclination to try because they weren’t mine. My niece has really been the only child I have started to warm up to in terms of interacting with a young child, and maybe that is the reason why my wife has decided now is the time to start.

I am not the pinnacle of the everyman most men are. I am not testosterone-charged, or physically fit, or socially-apt. I can’t really explain why, perhaps it was my awkward social development growing up. When I talk about what kind of parent I want to be, I say I want to be someone who will be there for my children in whatever capacity they want me to be. I’m not going to stick to them like a “helicopter parent”, but I do not want to be emotionally unavailable to them. My parents are great parents, who provided for us and still go the extra mile for us to this day. There were times though back then when they weren’t interested in what I had to say or how I felt about something. They tried too hard to fix me, believing I had some kind of problem when I was perfectly fine, I just didn’t share the same social views as they did about whatever it was we fought about. Every woman I have dated has been roughly the same way, trying to fix me, or encourage me to be something I am not. My wife, as much as I love her, tried to do this too early in the relationship. When it became clear to her that she would have to accept me or move on, I think she chose to accept. I am grateful for that, because I had no desire to dance that dance again with someone else, presuming there would be a someone else.

That’s part of the pain of growing up though, realizing that you aren’t some kind of broken doll, that you just have things inside you that tick differently. There is a constant race going on between you and everyone else around you to understand how you tick. When you think you know yourself, someone else comes along and believes they too know you well. We spend hours, days, weeks, months, and years pouring over each other using every psychological and mental test to understand behavior and actions, but most of the time, we’re just not listening and refusing to believe some people are that way for a reason. We invent labels for people, categorize them, and ensure they are known to everyone else, causing most of them to avoid simply on principle. After all, if you’re an extrovert, you don’t want to be around introverts.

My life will change in the coming year or so when we hopefully have a child. I fully expect to get inundated with plenty of slightly-sarcastic generic responses from other parents like “Enjoy never sleeping again!” or “Welcome to never having time for yourself!”. Those closer to me will no doubt add a heaping tablespoon of thinking-they-know-me in remarks like “I guess you won’t have time for video games now!” or “No more sitting around the house on Saturdays, eh?” I do hope those of you who plan to wield any sort of response to me aren’t terribly offended when I either A: Cold-stare you B: Tell you to fuck off C: Ironically laugh or D: Walk away.

Because I don’t ever have to grow up. Makes it easier for my children to understand me as I understand them.