Getting old stinks. Your 30th birthday is a more momentous milestone than it's often given credit for. It's only a few years later, as your knees start to wince before you've even thought of bending them, when you start googling things like 'how to look distinguished' and people you thought were the same age as you start calling you "sir" that you realize the stark truth: you're no longer a youthful hatchling. You're a straight up adult

Unlike turning eighteen and becoming an adult in a strictly legal sense, it's for reals this time. The 30th birthday is the first birthday where your decades-later birthday is already peaking at you through the window. Any minute now and you're forty.