-In two weeks, I will celebrate a major milestone, my twenty-fourth birthday.  Well, maybe “major” isn’t the right word.  You see, I just don’t think turning twenty-four is that big of a deal.  Turning nineteen is an important birthday, that’s your last year as a teenager.  Similarly, twenty, of course, is the first year of your twenties.  And at twenty-one, you become legal.  But from twenty-two to twenty-four, not much happens.  You get into a groove for three years and try not to look ahead.  Then your twenty-fifth birthday comes around and all hell breaks loose, next thing you know you’re married and living in Westchester and going to Crate & Barrel to shop for placemats.  Thankfully, I’m not there yet.  At twenty-three going on twenty-four, I’m still sort of going with the flow.  In fact, if your adolescence can be described as the “Wonder Years,” then I say the ages twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four deserve to get their own name too.  And so I’d like to welcome you to the “Whatever Years.”

-I don’t know what scares me more, the fact that my mom asked me if I want luggage for my birthday, or the fact that I think I do.

-In honor of my birthday, earlier today I decided to write down all of the major things that have happened to me in the last decade of my life.  I only wanted to list the most memorable and life-altering events.  Here’s what I came up with: witnessed Rangers win Stanley Cup, graduated high school, lost virginity, graduated college, perfected left-handed masturbation, published book.  That’s it.  Ten years of living and all I have to show for it is two diplomas, a poster, a paperback, a sore wrist, and a lifetime of frustration.  Why do I even bother?

-Where you live during the Whatever Years is crucial.  I’m getting kind of fed up with my cramped New York apartment.  I long to live in a place that doesn’t require twenty IKEA halogen lamps to light, that has a “living room” not a “common room,” that has a refrigerator with one of those cool ice-cube makers in the door, and that has a bed with a headboard so I can have sex without worrying about flying through temporary plaster wall that separates my room from my roommate’s room.