Ben,
Eighteen. You can vote, and you still can’t find the ketchup in a fridge you’ve opened ten thousand times.
When I was eighteen I had a Ford Escort with no reverse gear. I parked it facing downhill so I could roll it out in the morning. I worked nights at the bakery on Kerr Street and came home white with flour, and your grandma said I looked like a ghost somebody had dusted. I thought I knew everything. I knew how to park without reverse.
When Mrs. Henderson broke her hip you walked her dog every day for a month and never mentioned it to anybody. She told me at the mailbox. I was about ten years older than you are now before I did anything like that.
Happy birthday. Put a coat on before you go out.
Dad