Fresh from the culture-shock horrors of my 30th birthday, MSNBC has posted an article discussing the fact that many teenagers believe they will die young. As such, they are more likely to engage in risky behaviors like sex, heavy drinking, drug use, and will see increased suicide attempts.

And although I felt I’d die young too, I apparently missed the memo and didn’t get into the fun stuff there. I’m kinda pissed.

In retrospect I can say that the attitude did have an effect on me. Mid to late high school, despite having a just-below-3.0 grade point average, I got hit by a severe bout of apathy. It wasn’t really a case of ‘how will I use this,’ but a case of ‘man I don’t have that long, I got shit to figure out.’ And as such, time was spent self-absorbed learning more interesting but less useful stuff. There wasn’t too much risky behavior until college, and even then precious little. Hell, I only drank underage the once, and that was AFTER college (though 8 double shots of bacardis and/or vodka with no puking, go me!).

And now at 30, as the bell tolls for me off on the horizon, I look back and wonder if I really missed out, or dodged a bullet. Pretty sure the former. Alas.