As we get older, each birthday seems to have a significant meaning. There is more responsibility, more decisions and you are treated differently. Age is but a number but as we get older there is more expected from us. It appears that people are always looking forward to getting older. When you are 16 you get your license, 18 can vote, and 21 you can drink.
We celebrate all of our birthdays and even sometimes we have certain names for that age as well. Your 22nd birthday is referred to as your Taylor Swift Year and your 23rd Birthday is referred to as your Jordan year. Michael Jordan is the best basketball player of all time and wore number 23 in college and in the NBA. His number has been retired by the Chicago Bulls and people know the significance of the number 23 whether they are a basketball fan or not. This idea got me thinking what if we thought of other ways to describe your birthday.
Nothing against Michael Jordan or Taylor Swift but what if we did something new. What if we also refer to our 23rd birthday as our Blink 182 year?
In this generation, college students and other young adults love old pop rock music. We sometimes even listen to it more than current music. People sometimes cling on to certain memories and that might be how I feel about "High School Musical" or even throwback songs but people tend to look at other parts of their life based on music or movies. I remember when I heard "All the Small Things" and while I was not the biggest Blink 182 fan as a child I enjoy their music and will find time to listen to it. This leads to the question of how is 23 linked to Blink 182? It's a funny story: one of their most famous songs talks about growing up while having a child's mentality and even mentions age throughout the song.
In Blink 182's song "What's My Age Again?" Mark Hoppus details the struggles of being in his 20s but still acting like a child. There are instances where the person being portrayed is watching tv instead of paying attention to his girlfriend, performing a prank phone call, and even asking about ADD. The song details the events some people might have done as a kid and brings back the memories of adults when they were younger. One of the most famous lines in the song is, "Nobody likes you when you're 23."
This line from this song would go on to become a well-known phrase especially for the love of throwback music. While this song has been out for more than a decade it appears that people are using this phrase as their caption or description for their birthday. Many people who are in their twenties grew up with Blink 182 and while they are still performing and touring this is one way to remember the impact they had on us while we grew up. We all went through a pop-rock phase and getting to chant this line allows being nostalgic. Perhaps that's the reason we hold on to certain songs and memories.
We can all chuckle about when someone is about to turn a certain age and there is a joke behind it. That is how I feel about turning 23. I can jokingly say "Nobody likes you when you're 23." but I know that it is all in good fun. I know what I am trying to start may not be successful but next week I will celebrate my 23rd birthday and refer to it as my Blink 182 birthday. This song might be a little old for most people to remember but it does have an impact.
