The number 19 doesn’t have a lot of significance in our culture or in our language. It’s a bit more than 18, not quite 20. Very rarely will people try to get a 19% in anything, or spend less or more than $19, or follow 19 guidelines. It’s just one of those odd numbers that’s rarely used.
It’s a little strange to think about this, because if you consider the matter carefully, there’s not much significance attached to being 19. When you reach this particular age, nothing really happens. All throughout childhood, birthdays are celebrated, building in significance – at 16, you can drive a car. At 18, most of the world opens up to you – you can vote, for one thing. And at 21, in the United States, you can legally drink.
But when you turn 19, the occasion is rather anticlimactic – there’s usually not as big of a celebration as there was when you turned 18. For the first time, your birthday is just a little less important than it was last year.
I turned 19 this past Monday. I had a lovely birthday. Friends and family sent good wishes from across the country, and indeed, across the Atlantic. But nothing changed that day. There was no aspect of life that became newly available to me.
It wasn’t until my birthday was almost over that I finally realized what turning 19 means. It may not seem important on the day itself, but it marks the last year of being a teenager. You get seven years to be a teen, and those seven years are in many ways the most formative ones of your life, in which you make choices that may define you for decades to come.
The teenage years are hard to categorize. In books and at the movies, on television and in the lyrics of songs, being a teenager is portrayed in countless renditions. For some, they’re the best years of life, and it’s all downhill from the moment you hit 20. For others, they’re some of the worst, and life only begins after high school and college are over. They can be fantastic or dismal, fraught with emotions ranging from delirium to depression and anxiety to elation, and often they’re a roller-coaster ride through each and every one of those feelings.
But whatever the experience is that you’ve had, you’re only a teenager once. On your 19th birthday, the clock starts ticking; you’ve got just one more year until this phase of your life is behind you. So the best thing to do is probably what I was told just a few days ago. Enjoy every moment, and don’t underestimate what you can get out of this last year of being a teen.
