Today my dad turns 52. He loves to remind me of the fact that when I was born in March 1990, he was just 26 years old (my parents married when he was 25 in June 1989), and that I need to "get a move on" if I want to match/parallel his record, especially now that my cousin is getting married next year in April right before she turns 26. Although I know he says all of this in a tongue-in-cheek way, wtf.
Of course using that weird logic of his, if I had maintained the status quo by turning my mother into a grandmother (as per my paternal grandmother) at age 50, I should've already had a child 4 years ago. Also if I follow my own mother as an example, I just need to get married before I turn 28 to "beat" her. Better still if I follow Uncle KL's example which is somewhere in the 30s.
I'm not actually sure what the point of this all is, the setting up of nonsensical and totally arbitrary age benchmarks. But I guess it gives people the comforting illusion that all of life proceeds in the same one path sort of a way (which it most certainly does not!) and that one needs to hit benchmark A to get to B, then to C and D, and so on so forth.
Anyway I'm the first one in both my immediate paternal and maternal families to get a Masters degree, so there, I've gone and wrecked the idea of similar benchmarks.
Of course using that weird logic of his, if I had maintained the status quo by turning my mother into a grandmother (as per my paternal grandmother) at age 50, I should've already had a child 4 years ago. Also if I follow my own mother as an example, I just need to get married before I turn 28 to "beat" her. Better still if I follow Uncle KL's example which is somewhere in the 30s.
I'm not actually sure what the point of this all is, the setting up of nonsensical and totally arbitrary age benchmarks. But I guess it gives people the comforting illusion that all of life proceeds in the same one path sort of a way (which it most certainly does not!) and that one needs to hit benchmark A to get to B, then to C and D, and so on so forth.
Anyway I'm the first one in both my immediate paternal and maternal families to get a Masters degree, so there, I've gone and wrecked the idea of similar benchmarks.
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