Milestones
Life, if you're doing it right.
By age 10 you should have:
Long weird hair
Thirty five dollars in mostly dimes
One awful friend and one closeted friend
A rodent
An anxiety disorder managed entirely by a disconcerting foreign cartoon
By age 20 you should have:
No money at all beyond $65 in Sephora credit
A pair of white shoes
Jaw pain
A lot of bracelets
A fundamental lie that your friends believe about you
A good ex and a bad ex
A small stash of horrible cocaine
By age 30 you should have:
A bunch of tall socks and a bunch of short socks
Linen
An opinion about peaches vs. apricots
Bone fatigue
Three generations of towels
A lover who is disgusting to you
An air conditioner that makes a noise
By age 40 you should have:
A hole in your soul
A really fucked up bike sitting in storage
At least five hundred dollars and $75 in Sephora credit
A married friend who is clearly waiting to die
An advanced degree that makes you sad to think about
Membership to a very damp gym
Wife
By age 50 you should have:
More or fewer ribs than you started with
Access to a baby
An office you have had sex in
A neck that is basically non-functional
A drill you once held to your temple
Five hundred thousand dollars
Knowledge of true happiness
A website
By age 60 you should have:
At least one friend who believes you’re dead
An extremely dysplasic dog
A faded Endless Summer poster in a cheap frame in an upstairs bathroom
Knowledge of Hell
The world’s dullest knives in the world’s most nondescript knife block
A longterm, listless, low-stakes affair
By age 70 you should have:
Regrets that feel like they will split you in half
Strong beliefs about what animals think
A way of putting grill marks on things
Clots
Legs that are either completely hairless or completely hair
A bench or alcove in your honor
By age 80 you should have:
Mind like a stomped kite
A drink that is the only drink that you drink
No tears left
Little sensible car or a big terrifying one
Crumbly bones with powdery marrow
Smooth featureless socks
Hungry shadows that watch and wait
By age 90 you should have:
Nothing and no one
By age 100 you should have:
Huge crown
Huge pearl
Suicide pill
And then, nothing!