Q: What did the Thief get for his birthday?

A: Your bike!

(I always loved that one)

I just realized that I'm over the hill. OK, so I knew that before, like when I was listening to RadioU in Columbus (up-to-date Christian rock) and I said, "I can't even understand what they're saying!" Or when I started riding around town on a bike with a child seat on back and frankly didn't care that the bike wasn't cool (and just shrugged my shoulders when one of the soccer boys teased me about it).

The realization came as I was writing a thank you to my parents for my birthday gifts. A little background: we've always been responsible for giving our parents birthday lists, so they know what we've got our hearts set on. They've always been really good about getting us something from our lists (if not the whole list), and we've tried to be reasonable about the lists (well, not when we were young and circled every toy in every catalogue).

The threat always loomed: if you didn't make a list, you would get socks and underwear.

This year I got socks. And I made a list. And socks were at the top of the list, what I really wanted to get most of all.

See? I'm over the hill.