Make Me a Flapjack!

It all started in German class.

"Wie alt bis du?" I asked.

In the exercise, we paired up and asked each other a set of questions.

"Ich bin einundzwanzig Jahre alt," said Michael
"I am 21 years old."

"What's your name?" "how old are you?" "where are you from?" and the enigmatic "what kind of person are you?" which seemed a tad deep for introductory conversation.

"Wie alt bis du?" Michael asked.

A seemingly innocent exercise in basic conversational skills.

"Ich bin dreiundzwanzig Jahre alt," I told him.
"I am 23 years old."

"Wow," Michael said, "You're old."

I shrugged. "Fifth-year senior."

Michael nodded. "I'll be doing that too. It's pretty hard to get out in four years, especially if you change your major."

"Guilty," I said.

"Me too."

Wait right there.

While I'm thinking about it, let's talk about pancakes, shall we?

Pancakes are a kind of flat bread cooked in a frying pan or griddle. Depending on region and preference, a pancake may be topped or stuffed with fruits, nuts, jams, or meat. Pancakes are frequently prepared with a rising agent such as baking powder and are cooked on one side before they are flipped to be cooked on the other.

One interesting thing about pancakes is their universality. Unlike kibbeh, which has exclusively Mediterranean origins, pancakes find their roots in many cultures. From Asia to Africa to Europe, pancakes have their own styles and beginnings.

But no matter where you go, you'll be hard-pressed to find a culture that eats their pancakes plain. In Canada and the U.S., we drizzle syrup over these hotcakes and lather them in whipped cream or butter. In France, pancakes are fried thin and rolled into crepes, which are stuffed with cheese, spinach, fruit, sugar, or meat. A Czech "palačinky" is folded and topped with chocolate sauce. Nobody wants to eat their pancakes plain.

I only bring this up because as I was driving home that day, I realized that twenty-three really did feel old. Twenty-three, and I still don't really know what I'm doing with my life. In two years, I'd be halfway to thirty, and it seems like you're kind of supposed to have your life together by that point. None of this mucking about writing pancake blogs.

The truly frightening part was how quickly it was all going. 1999 was a decade ago. I remember 1999. What am I doing now that is so different from back then? I'm still in school, still running through the mazes, still sucking up to the teachers. What for?

Also, twenty-two had gone so fast. I didn't even remember most of it. Was the rest of my life going to zip by like this?

I changed lanes and puzzled that one over. What had I done when I was twenty-two? It seemed like that year didn't even exist. I remembered twenty and twenty-one... what happened to twenty-two?

It was at that moment that I became unsure of my own age.

Okay, it's 2009. I was born in 1987. 109 minus 87 equals...

Twenty-three, right?

Am I really twenty-three? Some of my friends are two years older than me. They couldn't be twenty-five already...

Who else was my age?

Russell. Russell was born within days of me.

I grabbed my phone and dialed.

"Biiiiill!"
"Ruuussseeelll!"
"What's goin' on?"
"Nothing. Quick question."
"Shoot."
"How old are you?"
Pauses. "I am twenty-two."
I was stunned. "Wow. I guess that means I am too."

So that's the story of how I got a year of my life back. I think the moral of the story is to keep things interesting or else you lose track of what you've experienced. You fall into the mundanity of the everyday and forget to grow or experience something new. It's kind of like how the twenty-second plain pancake would be indistinguishable from the twenty-first or twenty-third. You might even lose track of how many pancakes you've eaten. But if you try some crepes, maybe a "palačinky" or two, then maybe it won't be so easy to lose your place.