I've developed, with some very meaningful thought, a new appreciation for what I think will be pretty close to being the second half of my life. I know that I understand so much more now and I have the ability to at least try to pass some of that on to my children. They're especially going to like the trait I gift them of very high, afro-like, hair that most men my age covet. For me its a blessing as instead of getting older with more distinguished graying hair, I just keep getting taller as it grows out.
But this day, in retrospect, has made me ponder some of the great people I have in my life and how much I appreciate the influence they have had on me. I truly am so fortunate to have been blessed with some of the most amazing people I know be my friends for decades. I even asked said friends to remember some of the most compelling and profound times they had about me and what specific memory sticks out the most to them. Here's a small sample:
- "By far, when you were in that break dancing class when you were 12."
- "You locked in the bathroom for the entire plane flight home after church street station"
- "Chubby skimboarder when you were 10."
There are actually some more graphic one's that I'll save for the book project but in all they are very telling and, at times, more meaningful than the above notes.
With that, I digress; I start to come to the realization that Forty is an octagonal number, and as the sum of the first four pentagonal numbers, it is a pentagonal pyramidal number. Adding up some subsets of its divisors (e.g., 1, 4, 5, 10 and 20) gives 40, hence 40 is a semiperfect number. (Note: stolen from Wikipedia, I'm not that smart.)
I'm happy I'm 40 and happy that some people might actually take me seriously from here on out. At least my graying and rising hair will give them something more to think about than "who is that old, chubby guy trying to skimboard." Some things don't change.
