Sixteen Candles, Sixteen Years, Sixteen Thoughts

When I was younger, I was obsessed with this movie with Debby Ryan called “Sixteen Candles”. It was released in 2010. I was around four at the time, if my math is right.

What I was intrigued with wasn’t the storyline or the underlying message. (To be honest, does anyone watch these kinds of movies for the message?) I’m fairly sure that it was the premise of sixteen wishes and them magically coming true that seriously captivated my attention.

Sixteen is a large number for a four year old. I thought that these teenagers, these sixteen year olds, were fully grown adults. I mean most of them as portrayed by Hollywood had a car, a job, and money. These were all the things that made up an adult to four-year-old me.

Debby Ryan made me excited to turn sixteen. I wanted my own Sweet Sixteen someday. And that someday seemed so far away.

Ken, a close friend of mine, told me to do something special for this day since I was turning sixteen on the sixteenth. He called it a golden birthday. I’ve had so many “somedays” come and go, but I sit here on my laptop still unsure of what is special enough for my own golden birthday. Does uncertainty never leave your side, even as you grow older?

I think I might’ve enjoyed being fifteen a little too much. So much so to the point that I’ve taken it for granted. I always complained that being a sophomore was annoying because you were always tiptoeing between the naivete of freshman year and the somewhat more serious attitude that came with junior year. I don’t know why I complained so much, because now that junior year is fastly approaching, I think a part of me wishes I could even go back to freshman year.

I am sixteen now, and I am inching closer towards legal adulthood as each day passes. Yet I don’t feel any older, any wiser, or any more aware of the world around me. I feel more unsure of myself than when I was four. I’m not sure if I am as poised and graceful and cool as four-year-old-me imagined the sixteen-year-old version of herself to be. Would she be proud?

I actually kind of hate when my birthday is. It is smack dab in the middle of the year. So I have to pass all the boring months to get to it. Everything is boring again until you hit the “-ember” months and it’s spent in anticipation for the holidays. There is nothing interesting happening before, after, during, or on my birthday. Also, it makes me a Gemini, and apparently a lot of people hate Geminis. Trump is a Gemini.

But Tupac also is. He was born on June 16 as well, actually. I learned that a while ago. This brings me back to the origins of me hating the date of my birthday. I always thought it was cool that a lot of celebrities were born during December. One of my friends, Wendy, shared a birthday with Finn Wolfhard. That made me do my own research, and I found out that Tupac shared my birthday. Not a lot of people know that.

So when my history teacher assigned a project to find people relevant to American history that share the same birthday as you, I was overjoyed to finally be able to use this random fact I had learned from a research rabbithole spurred by Finn Wolfhard. I was shot down however, when he questioned Tupac’s relevance to American history. I still maintain to “keep ya head up”.

But, back to Debby Ryan. Sixteen wishes honestly seems like a lot. I tried making my own list of sixteen things I wanted, but I couldn’t make it past number four. Four.

I don’t know if that means I’m happy with my life and content or if it means that I don’t know myself well enough to know sixteen things I want. Am I overthinking things? Maybe. But why does it always seem like I want so many things until I am actually asked about it? Why does it always seem that way?

Another friend of mine, Max, wished me a “happy birthday” when the clock struck midnight. I was up, as I always am, cleaning furiously while Taylor Swift blasted in my eardrums so as not to be alone with my thoughts.

I was surprised by Max’s greeting, not because it was late. But because it’s been a while since Max and I have truly engaged in a conversation as invigorating as when I first became friends with him in middle school. I was surprised that he remembered. I was surprised that he messaged me.

I have this problem where I forget, really easily. I have the attention span of a goldfish, and people always tease me for it. It’s actually a really terrible issue I have. It is so bad that despite the importance and value Max has in my life, I’ve forgotten his birthday.

So when the text, “happy birthday, kat!” showed up in my notifications, I felt three emotions overcome me before time’s arrow hit 12:01 A.M. Surprise. Joy. Guilt.

I will never forget when Max reached out to me a couple months earlier and caught up with me. The years since we had last talked had gone by so fast. He referred to an event that happened during this period of silence as “when we weren’t talking” and I felt guilt rise in me. Why am I always forgetting? Why couldn’t I remember Max and his birthday?

My friend Claire turned eighteen two years ago. She had no idea some of my other friends and I were planning a surprise for her. I printed out a senior citizen card template, and another friend photoshopped a picture of her on it. We were always joking around that Claire was basically a grandma, being the oldest of us all. She complained about college applications, her job, her back, her boyfriend. She seemed like she knew what she was doing.

When Claire walked through the door, we all came out and yelled “Happy Birthday Claire!”. I walked over to her to present her honorary senior citizen card and she just burst into tears. Her composed grandma persona broke down right in front of us.

I thought it was the senior citizen card that made her cry. I immediately apologized for calling her old.

Claire wears these glasses that make her eyes bigger, so when she looked at me I could just see her tears welling up and her cheeks flush and turn more red with each sniffle.

“It’s not the card. It’s actually kinda funny.” She managed to get out between sobs.

“What is it then?” I thought we had gotten her the wrong cake or something.

“I don’t feel eighteen. I’m not ready for it.” Claire resumed sobbing and buried her head in her hands.

We stood there unsure of what to say. So we let Claire cry. She fell asleep a bit soon after, too tired to keep letting the tears escape. We left the cake and the card in her kitchen.

I remember just being confused. I always thought Claire was unfazed by anything. She was invincible to me.

I understand Claire now, maybe not fully, but way better than I did then. I don’t feel sixteen. It’s like I haven’t earned it. The age.

It’s like how video game characters increase in multiple stats to get to different levels. I don’t think I’ve gotten enough points or gained enough knowledge to be sixteen.

When my parents surprised me with sixteen candles on a perfectly frosted cake, I remembered Claire all over again.

I, like anyone else, get excited for my birthday. I make countdowns and anxiously wait for the day to arrive. But there’s always a certain kind of melancholy that sets over the day. What have I done in the past year? What lies ahead of me? Have I become better?

Like clockwork, every year my thoughts race and my heart pounds as if I were someone guilty of murder. But nothing, except for my habit of overthinking, changes.

So I do not have sixteen wishes to present to the birthday gods or spirits today on June 16, 2022. But I do instead have sixteen thoughts that have kept me from sleeping and made me write this confusing and unnecessarily long article at 4 A.M.

1. Debby Ryan’s “Sixteen Candles”

2. Ken and Golden Birthdays

3. Oh god, adulthood.

4. Why did I have to be born in summer?

5. Oh yeah, Tupac!

6. Wendy and Finn Wolfhard

7. When did Finn Wolfhard turn nineteen?

8. Why can’t I think of sixteen wishes?

9. Max’s Birthday

10. Why am I so forgetful?

11. Claire’s Senior Citizen Card

12. Did Claire graduate from college yet?

13. Sixteen candles seems hard to fit on one cake.

14. Have I changed for better or worse?

15. Why did I have to drink so much tea?

16. Oh no, the sun is rising.

Happy birthday to me. One more candle. One more year. One more looming thought that does not seem to fade away.