Why is it that the lives of people around you always seem to function as the exact opposite of yours? Why does it seem like everyone around you is crashing into oblivion just when your life is peaches and you desire nothing more than continues happiness? Conversely, why is it that when your life is spiraling out of control, everyone else seems to be doing the doe-eyed, goofy-grin thing? Why is it that when I say all this I sound like a love-hating version of Good Ol' Ebenezer?
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Everyone that I have ever known of my own age or thereabouts (plus-minus 4 years, I guess) is convinced that one particular age of their life thus far has been the best. Most people can pinpoint the year of their life they were happiest in. Some think of early childhood, 5 years or so. They remember the literally unadulterated pleasure of the lack of responsibility and concern. All you were really worried about at the age of 5 was not waking up in a damp bed and the scary, green creature under your bed or in your closet or the ghastly shadows cast by the night-light on the ceiling.

I've known people who remember pre-pubescent years--10, 11, 12--for the relatively few worries and the freedom to get your knees scrapped without the fear of seeming out-of-place. If you didn't have a bruise to prove otherwise, you were a wimp. Girls were yucky and cooties were a dangerously terminal disease. This carried on into puberty at approximately 13 though the extra "perks" that stage brought, along with the sense of finally growing up, possessed a high all its own.

16 was sweet for some. 18 though was the Real Deal. When you hit 18, you were The (Wo)Man! You were independent. You had your very own identity--and a card to prove it. You were legal and had a card to prove that too. You could drive--"Would you like to see my license, Officer?" you were no longer answerable to the Folks. All systems of control were now redundant since you were all grown up!

Some hit a magnification of the same stage at 21. So 21 was THE age to be. 21, as I've loved to point out, is the age when you're legal everywhere in the world. More importantly for certain of these newly liberated miscreants, you were legal everywhere in the world, for everything!

Getting to the point of this seemingly aimless rant, I've always had a very fixed time of my life which I've considered my greatest. Although it was part of my teenage years, atypically it was not my 16th or 18th year but the one in between. I've never had as much fun, or felt as emanciapted as I did in that year. Maybe it has more to do with the stages of life then the actual age in years because it was the time I was getting through with my O'Levels and starting off on my A's. Either way though, I ended up having a blast.

The point of this entire exercise was to clarify one thing: it's fun figuring out which phase of your past has been the best. It helps you put alot of things into perspective and you end up thinking about alllllllllllll the good times. Good exercise. =)

When I was seventeen
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for small town girls
And soft summer nights
We’d hide from the lights
On the village green
When I was seventeen

When I was twenty-one
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for city girls
Who lived up the stair
With all that perfumed hair
And it came undone
When I was twenty-one

When I was thirty-five
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for blue-blooded girls
Of independent means
We’d ride in limousines
Their chauffeurs would drive
When I was thirty-five

But now the days grow short
I’m in the autumn of the year
And now I think of my life as vintage wine
from fine old kegs
from the brim to the dregs
And it poured sweet and clear
It was a very good year

It was a mess of good years

--Frank Sinatra, "It Was a Very Good Year"