Today I am 50.

Even as I type that, it just looks so wrong. I don't feel 50... except first thing in the morning. I don't yet look 50, or at least that's what most people are nice enough to tell me. But my birth certificate doesn't lie — unless my parents were a lot better at keeping secrets than I've given them credit for.

I remember looking up at my brother and sister's cribs, and thinking about how I was free and they were still trapped. I was three, and it's the earliest clear memory I have.

I remember the first poem I ever wrote. "Time flies quickly, time flies fast. Before you know it, the present is the past." I was six. How prophetic.

I remember my uncle telling me to sit down next to him and watch something really important on TV. It was Nixon's resignation speech. I was seven.

I remember Bruce Jenner as the hero of the 1976 Olympics. I wanted to be just like him, as did every boy in America at the time. I was nine.

I remember being two weeks too young to vote in the 1984 presidential election, and griping about how unfair that was.

I remember when the drinking age in New York went from 19 to 21, ten days after my 19th birthday. I don't remember those ten days themselves very well, though.

I remember where I was when I heard the news that the space shuttle Challenger had exploded. And exactly what I was doing the morning of Sept. 11th, 2001.

I remember my first girlfriend. My first paycheck. My first trip abroad. My first 300 game. My first DD here. And at least three-quarters of all the books I've ever read.

...I guess I've lived through those five decades, after all.

Dang.