Eleven

I know. You're all just being polite. You don't know when to jump up and shout, "Hey. You forgot to mention your eleventh anniversary." Well, fret no further, since that time has already passed and to be quite honest I didn't even notice myself.
This is most likely due to the slender nature of eleven as a number. All that verticality and no curves to speak of. It carries none of the weight that its predecessor, the haughty and at times oppressive "ten." So you can manage ten? Why not eleven? What's the big deal?
I had a similar discussion with my son this past weekend on the advent of his nineteenth advent. He complained that there was nothing particularly notable about turning this age, since he had already passed the age of registering for selective service and voting. He had his driver's license for a while now, and it was going to be another couple years before that next plateau: twenty-one. We wondered a bit about the reasoning behind pushing that emancipated adult thing back off of the nice round twenty. Some sort of numeroligical significance? Maybe the powers that be just figured you'd be busy up until twenty and they wanted to be sure they had your attention before they turned you loose on all that grownup mishegas. And how do most of us celebrate turning twenty-one? Not by showing off just how responsible we can be.
At least that's how my friends like to remind me I behaved.
For her part, my wife was interested to hear that this blog had just passed another mild milestone. Then she swung a little harder and said, "Call me when you hit that next big one. One with a five or a ten in it." This was coming from the woman who, along with her husband, has mined Al Gore's Internet for clues about what special stone, metal or substance commemorates each anniversary. Finding ways to make each passing day special is a challenge, and if a day goes by without something to mark it as unique, then we should make something up. As Special Agent Cooper used to say, "You've got to give yourself a present every day."
If I've been able to present you with a gift in the past three hundred sixty-five or so days, then this has been totally worth it. If not, I'll be back here tomorrow, working on another one.