Reflections from My Thirtieth Birthday

Despite my sincerest and most heartfelt protestations, I turned thirty last Sunday. My social media accounts decided to commemorate this landmark event by targeting their advertisements toward me under the assumption that I have hit or am nearing typical post-thirty milestones while remaining seemingly unaware of the fact that I am a single woman who made an active decision to create an Instagram account for her cat and owns more decorative teapots than cute bras. Upon logging into Instagram on Sunday, the first ad that popped up was a picture of a positive pregnancy test, which, for many my age, would result in joyous phone calls to friends and relatives but inspired instead in me a furious panic in case one can somehow get knocked up by eating corn chips in bed while watching Fifty Shades of Gray. Despite certain mathematical impossibilities, I considered taking a pregnancy test anyway as I generally have the chill of Donald Trump’s 4am Twitter feed, but when I opened the box, an anatomy textbook and a prescription for Xanax fell out instead, along with a coupon for Lean Cuisines and a card that said, “Happy 30th Birthday from your friends at ClearBlue. We thought you could use these more.” Which was an enormous relief as I do not actually ever want to have children, although I must admit that, as an aspiring writer with a penchant for talking almost exclusively about myself, a memoir about a mysterious pregnancy arising amidst a period of life in which the most action I’ve gotten was my annual pap smear was guaranteed to be an immediate best seller. I’d call it Fear and Loathing in My Uterus. Or For Womb the Bell Tolls. I haven’t decided yet.