I turned 25 Sunday, and I’m not happy about it. Yes, I received some lovely gifts, and yes, I spent the weekend surrounded by family and friends, but every time someone asked me to smile for a picture, I felt like they were sizing me up for dentures.

I don’t like being 25 on a college campus, where everyone is younger than me, including most tenured professors. When I bought textbooks this year, a number of people in line, waiting to purchase titles such as “Quantified Nanobiology Theory and Practice in Latin,” looked like they had come straight to college immediately after an excellent showing in the third grade.

Of course, they were actually regular undergraduates aged 18 and above. Any 9-year-old with the chops for college would go to a much more prestigious school than this one. When I was a freshman, I never thought I looked so young. I believed my appearance was the same as everyone else between ages 18 and 30. But after reexamining photos from that era, it is obvious that I was young and immature. The pacifier and bib are dead giveaways. I never should have joined that fraternity.

Twenty-five is a quarter-century, a milestone, and so I can’t help but compare myself to famous people to see what they had done by this age. James Dean won an Academy Award. Joan of Arc led an army to several victories in battle. (The French army, even, making it far more impressive.) And they were both dead by 25! So things could be worse.

I’m still left feeling old, a condition that will only worsen in time. In another 25 years I’ll be eligible for AARP; in 40 I’ll qualify for senior pricing at the movies; in 55, I’ll be a burden on my family; etc.

I already know a lot of the tricks of old age. I know that old people discuss things around each other we would never share with you. What happens is, we identify ourselves by each saying the secret old person code (“God, my back is killing me”), so we know we are in safe company. Then we can then talk about secret old people things, like ways to trick young people into paying more into social security.

Turning 25 isn’t without its perks, though. I can rent a car without an under-25 surcharge, which runs $20 or $25 per day in most cities. Maybe it’s not as good as when you turn 21 and you can shoot off fireworks in New Hampshire with the appropriate permits, but it’s something.

Twenty-five-year-olds are also eligible to serve in the United States House of Representatives. When I was a freshman, this guy on the 16th floor of my building, whose name might have been Gary, sold fake IDs. (It said his name was “Gary” on his driver’s license, but who knows.) I asked if he could get me a fake saying I was 25 so I could run for Congress.

Helpfully, he said he thought they would probably check more than a driver’s license for that. I wonder what happened to Gary. I hope his cellmate is nice.

Those things make it significant, but it’s really the last meaningful birthday milestone. They start at 16, with your driver’s license. At 17 you can see “R” movies. At 18 you can become an active citizen by voting, and, more importantly, by purchasing lotto tickets and adult magazines.

At 19 you are the age you claimed to be in AOL chatrooms since you were 12; at 20 you can refer to yourself as “in my twenties.” At 21 you can drink; at 22 you can enter rehab. I’m not saying you should take advantage of all these perks – everybody knows voting is for weenies – but there’s nothing like them for birthdays 26 and up.

So I’m done caring about birthdays. I have nothing to gain, except a few birthday cards each year. I don’t need them. They just make my mail heavier, and my back is already killing me.

Scott is a third-year law student. He got confused and rented a Congressperson.