Congratulate me on my new status!

There's been a recent development in my life, so I hope you'll all join me in celebrating. Sara and I live in an apartment that is part of a series of renovated buildings similar to brownstones or rowhouses, except set off from the street like a housing project. It's a nice neighborhood, and gives one the sense of being out of the bustle of Copenhagen's mean streets. There are also a lot of young families, particularly immigrant families with kids. It will come as a surprise to nobody that I'm not much a fan of noisy kids, particularly when they play soccer under my window, as was the case a few days ago. One of them thought it would be a good idea to kick the ball up in the air, which with him being directly under our apartment window, also meant that the ball hit our window. It wasn't hard enough to break it, but it was loud enough to startle me out of reading. Being a kid, he demonstrated that the main difference between childhood and maturity is the inability to learn from your mistakes by immediately deciding to do it again.

So I went to the window and waved my finger at him. I should add that I was wearing a bathrobe and hadn't showered, so my long-past-needing-a-haircut hair was standing off my head several inches in every direction.

And in this moment, as I stood looking down at the boy paralyzed, anticipating just how badly this was going to go for him, I made a realization. In the time it took for my finger to wave from left to right I ticked over from young to middle-aged.

So please join me in celebrating my new found status as stern middle-aged man, which will hopefully be followed by grumpy old guy and eventually crusty old fart. You kids get out of my yard!