a thousand-million

"By thirty you'll be about perfect." This was the prophecy of my next door neighbor as I was growing up. He was a soccer coach to my sister and the father in one of the best families I think has ever existed. I suspected he was a secret CIA agent. He spoke 13 languages and lived in the suburbs teaching ESL?  I didn't think so. Not because it was a waste of talent (it's not), but because I have a suspicious mind. That family seemed too perfect: hilarious genius kids, the mom that hosted Bible study, the dad that was very family oriented... anywho, I love them, and I now doubt that he was a secret agent. But he could have been if he had different priorities... they were/are amazing people.
In my twenties I think of that incredibly off-the-cuff  remark he once made. He probably doesn't even remember it, yet it's one of those things that I've internalized as Truth with little inspection, like how I sometimes believe that my soul mate's name starts with a certain letter, like when you're a kid and you twist an apple stem and begin the alphabet "a, b,c, etc" and whatever letter you stop on when the stem rips off will be your true love. So, somehow this is a truth I've come to believe in, or at least casts doubt to my adult reality: I will fall in love with ---- (wasn't that a movie starring Robert Downey Jr and Marisa Tomei?) and I will reach my apex at thirty.
All signs tell me that this will not be true. I am a late bloomer, and while I think that I have shown improvement in recent years the prospect of perfection by thirty is bleak. I probably was latching onto any amount of encouragement that I'd turn out alright, self-loathing teenager that I was. Alls I knows is, I plan to stay aboard the diet train,yet I've never taken to the gym, and apparently I've stopped reading books (I'm not sure why this happened, I always loved to read before college), but I have a greater appreciation for my friends and family all of the time. It's a mixed bag I'd say. We will see. I know that the love of my life is probably not predictably determined by the sturdiness of an apple stem, but it continues to be a thought that pops into my head whenever I am confronted with the terrifying unlimited possibilities of what the unknown future might contain. Goodnight!