LIFE:Maeve Higgins kisses her 20s goodbye
I LISTEN TO LYRIC FM, I worry about my friends, I own plants and I watch subtitled documentaries. I know when to leave a party and what to say at funerals, I use contraception and I’m good at my job.
I have a pension, I think I know best, I am good at making conversation with people I dislike, I drink too much coffee and say that often. I give my parents advice, I gave up being a Catholic ages ago, I pay for quality in clothes. It’s difficult for me to see leftover bones and not hope someone will use them for stock. Once I made cocktails with gin, lemon juice and champagne.
So, don't you think all of that is pretty grown up of me? I think I sound like a proper adult. I look like one, definitely. When I'm over-tired and have my specific "comfy" clothes on, I believe that – and have witnesses to back me up on this – that I could pass for 50. I'm actually 29. I will be 30 soon. I used to think 30 sounded ancient, but now that I'm almost there I've come around to thinking it is not ancient. In fact, I now think 30 is young. I'll probably say that the whole way up along. Seventy? That's young. Ninety-two? That's actually very young. I am only 146years old.
The thing is, naturally, I don’t feel as old as I am. Us people are like that. We can’t believe it! It feels like we were teenagers last week. I don’t wish I was a teenager or a twentysomething year old; it’s not that at all. I am very happy to have lasted this long and learned about anchovies and bills and self-improvement. I’m just surprised. I feel a bit caught on the hop. I’m afraid I’ll be expected to know things because I’m old enough to know them.
Recently I found out that if you drop a hairdryer into the bath with you, suddenly you will be dead. That seems like an important thing to bear in mind, but I found out only because it happened in a terrible Mel Gibson film. I felt like a fool.
Only last week I started a perfectly adequate queue in the bank, only for someone to stand behind a sign saying “Queue starts here” and the people behind me in my made-up queue started to grumble. Then I had to look nonchalant and pretend my phone was ringing so I could wander off, my face burning away nicely.
I resent, too, the ever-more-frequent occurrence of situations that I’m expected to handle alone, like joining a gym, maintaining a tricky friendship, or learning to drive. Nobody will do this for me or with me – boring! I’m clinging to irresponsibility but it’s getting away from me.
One of the things a 30-year-old lady is meant to fret about, if medical science and Chatmagazine are to be believed, is her baby-making facilities. I've got something like a tonne of a dozen eggs waiting for their special place in Higgins history. As sure as eggs is eggs, I have yet to decide what to do with mine. For ova, they are quite elderly now, although I haven't noticed any difference. They don't seem to mind not being used, they're not pranking my phone or sending empty fertiliser bags to the house just yet.
Like a lot of real things that happen as I get older, the whole thing seems quite abstract.
I’ve always predicted, just to myself, what I will be like when I hit a certain age. My imaginings have consistently been wrong. I was convinced as a 10-year-old that when I turned 15 I’d magically have lipstick on and be holding hands with my boyfriend. To this day I can barely even use lipgloss, lipstick’s simple little sister, and handholding seems corny to me now – unless the ground is icy.
I was sure I’d have a huge party for my 21st birthday, and that it would fit in with my brand new super-outgoing, unbelievably popular personality. Of course my actual party fitted in with my actual personality: it was awkward and went on a bit, culminating in an embarrassing speech by a drunk man nobody really knew.
So I won’t get my hopes up for my 30th. I won’t cross my fingers and wish to wake up a trilingual ice queen type with “a head for business and a bod for sin” (the best line ever delivered by Melanie Griffith) even though that’s basically what I’d hoped to be at this age. I know better now; birthdays don’t mean anything at all.
Tonight my sister got home and I was chatting to her and dipping my fingertips into a nightlight on the table. She blew out the flame and moved the nightlight away. I asked her if she did that because of me. She said yes, that she had to move it before I burned myself or spilled wax on my laptop.
She’s right. I’m almost 30 and still can’t be trusted around candles.
Maeve Higgins tours to Dolan’s Warehouse in Limerick next Thursday, Firkin Crane in Cork next Friday, and Dublin on April 5th