21!
and it's all downhill from here.
there were cocktails and conversation and apple crumbles and fancy dinners and hookah. there were no clubs, no rows-upon-rows-of-pints, no debauched keeling into the pavement, no lecherous grinding on seedy dance floors, no reckless gambling - in short, none of those things one is entirely free to do when hitting the big two-one. and there was no cataclysmic tipping point, no overwhelming sense of adulthood: only that feeling of acceleration, the years ticking out. in a few weeks it will be as though I've been 21 all my life, under the skin of the years that peel away in long strips of living.
but there was bubblewrap, a whole sheet of it, and I stamped out the air pockets like I was 5 years old again.