I’m coming up on my 46th Birthday. And somehow, I just recently made the connection that celebrating one’s 46th Birthday in the Year 2023 means that I’ve now spent an equal amount of time in the 20th Century and in the 21st Century. Twenty-three years in the 1900s and twenty-three years in the 2000s. Isn’t that crazy?!? It’s kind of trippy to realize how quickly time passes. And it honestly gets weirder the more you think about it. Here are some facts that I’ve worked out, based on this lifetime of straddling two centuries:

• The day of my birth is just as close to this date in history as it is to the beginning of the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
• I was born during the Jimmy Carter Administration — and the Carter Administration is equidistant to the Herbert Hoover Administration and the Joe Biden Administration.
• I was born during the Disco Era — and the music career of the Bee Gees is closer, historically, to the music career of Louis Armstrong than to the music career of Taylor Swift.
• If I were to manage to live another 46 years, the year of my 92nd birthday would be 2089 (which still sounds like something from a science-fiction movie).

Time stacks up so quickly! I see this more and more, the older I get. I’m not necessarily scared by that or depressed by that. It just amazes me, more than anything. History is just time. And a lifetime straddling two centuries stretches a lot further than we realize.