History Main / MilestoneBirthdayAngst

* ''Webcomic/BittersweetLife'': When a group of friends is about to turn thirty, the girls complain to the guy who brought it up for killing the mood. Nani claims she started school early and is younger than the rest of them, but they don't buy it. A year later, Nani claims she still isn't thirty because her birthday hasn't happened yet, even though age isn't tied to birthdays in Korea. A year after that, Nani is out of excuses, so she pushes one of the candles into the cake to express her disappointment.

Milestone birthdays are those that society has deemed important -- (16, 18, 21, the "decade" birthdays, and other years significant to the character or their culture) and are meant to be happy, if retrospective, affairs. Fiction, however, tends to treat it as the year equivalent of the FirstGrayHair -- a character is approaching 30/40/50 and increasingly dreads it.

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* The subtitle of ''{{Literature/Wringer}}'' is "Not all birthdays are welcome." Palmer dreads turning 10, as it is the age when boys in his town must become wringers for the annual festival, where pigeons are shot for charity. Wringers are told to "wring" out any of them that survive.

* ''Literature/AllTheWorldsAStage'': The opening recounts how Fandorin started to panic after his fiftieth birthday. He reacted in typical Fandorin fashion, by becoming even more awesome (learning a new language every year, learning tightrope walking, learning to fly an airplane, etc).

!!Examples

[[folder:Films -- Live Action]]

[[folder:Theater]]

* ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'': ImpliedTrope in "[[Recap/BojackHorsemanS1E07SayAnything Say Anything]]", where Princess Carolyn has a miserable date with [=BoJack=] then resolves to be a hardened career woman. Alone in her office, she tells herself that she will be cold and robotic ...then her phone reminds her that it's her 40th birthday. A later episode reveals that, in 2007, Princess Carolyn expected to have a family by her fortieth.

* The song "30" from ''Film/BoBurnhamInside'' deals with Bo's anxieties about turning 30, how he hates longer being able to relate to the youth, and how he can't help but compare himself to the accomplishments of his friends and the previous generation.
-->''When he was 27, my granddad fought in Vietnam\\
When I was 27, I built a birdhouse with my mom\\

--->''They're singing, "Happy birthday"\\
You just wanna lay down and cry\\

** Phoebe was pretty okay with turning thirty...until her twin sister Ursula tells her they are in fact thirty-one. Suddenly Phoebe's plan of stuff she wanted to accomplish falls apart and she feels particularly bad.
* Done with a flashback on ''Series/TheGoldenGirls''. A then-younger Sophia discovers that her records were mixed up at Ellis Island and she's actually turning fifty, not forty-eight. She laments that she's "an old lady who hasn't accomplished a thing in her life." Thankfully, Dorothy is on hand to remind her of all of the things she ''has'' achieved, and the birthday turns out to be a happy one (especially when Sal offers to comfort Sophia, and the two [[ParentalSexualitySquick start going at it]]).

* ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'': ImpliedTrope in "[[Recap/BojackHorsemanS1E07SayAnything Say Anything]]", where Princess Carolyn has a miserable date with [=BoJack=] then resolves to be a hardened career woman. Alone in her office, she tells herself that she will be cold and robotic...then her phone reminds her that it's her 40th birthday. A later episode reveals that, in 2007, Princess Carolyn expected to have a family by her fortieth.
%% - is this a specific birthday? * In the ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' episode "Bri, Robot", the beginning of the episode involves Brian dreading his birthday since it'll get him closer to death and he's worried whether he'll have a good legacy to leave behind.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'' episode "Grandpa's Birthday", Grandpa Phil dreads his upcoming 81st birthday because he believes in a family curse where his family members would die at the age of 81. Arnold tries to convince him that he's going to live but Grandpa accepts that his time is coming. On the eve of his birthday, it turns out Grandpa didn't die and that he miscalculates the family curse age, realizing it's supposed to be 91 not 81 years old. Then, he, his family, and the borders (except Oskar) are overjoyed that he's going to live.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' episode "Bri, Robot", the beginning of the episode involves Brian dreading his birthday since it'll get him closer to death and he's worried whether he'll have a good legacy to leave behind.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' episode "Bri, Robot", the beginning of the episode involves Brian dreading his birthday, since it'll get him closer to death and he's worried whether he'll have a good legacy to leave behind
* . In the ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'' episode "Grandpa's Birthday", Grandpa Phil dreads his upcoming 81st birthday because he believes in a family curse where his family members would die at the age of 81. Arnold tries to convince him that he's going to live but Grandpa accepts that his time is coming. On the eve of his birthday, it turns out Grandpa didn't die and that he miscalculates the family curse age, realizing it's supposed to be 91 not 81 years old. Then, he, his family, and the borders (except Oskar) are overjoyed that he's going to live.

Compare BirthdayHater, who despises all birthdays, not just the milestone ones, and FirstGrayHair, another biological marker that makes a character freak out about aging. See also GrowingUpSucks, DangerousSixteenthBirthday, BittersweetSeventeen, and ChristmasCake (which arose due to the pressure in Japanese society to marry by 25). Not to be confused with MilestoneCelebration, which is when the ''work'' does something to celebrate its age/length.

* ''Film/TickTickBoom'': Jonathan despairs at turning 30, since he feels like he hasn't made it as a playwright and composer (his idol, Creator/StephenSondheim, put out his first musical at 27), while his best friend and girlfriend are both making career moves.

* In ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'' Kirk is celebrating his fiftieth birthday, and is so sullen about it that [=McCoy=] calls him out on it, saying that he's treating it like his own funeral. The events of the film rejuvenate him, by the end he says that he feels young.

* The protagonist of ''Literature/{{Steppenwolf}}'' by Creator/HermannHesse is 47 and suicidal. Shortly after the beginning of the novel, he gets the idea to committ suicide on the day of his 50th birthday.

* ''Series/{{Community}}'': "[[Recap/CommunityS5E11GIJeff G.I. Jeff]]" is an episode that takes place in Jeff's mind. He imagines himself and the remaining cast as characters from ''Franchise/GIJoe'', because he fell into a coma from overdosing on scotch and street drugs that he took because of angst brought on by his upcoming 40th birthday.

** Ross bought a red sports car, claiming he's a sports car enthusiast, despite the fact he didn't know what the horse power is which clearly points to it being a MidlifeCrisisCar. Ross's car gets locked in by two cars. He spends his birthday trying to get out. His joy is completely spoiled when an unattractive old man in the very same red car greets him and Ross gets dejected.
** Phoebe was pretty okay with turning thirty... until her twin sister Ursula tells her they are in fact thirty-one. Suddenly Phoebe's plan of stuff she wanted to accomplish falls apart and she feels particularly bad.

* Dom in ''Series/{{Looking}}'' is a 39-year-old who hates that he's turning 40. He's a {{Casanova}} who doesn't want his looks to leave him, and has unfulfilled career aspirations that lead him to start a restaurant.

* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': Bashir is grumpy about turning 30 in "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E18DistantVoices Distant Voices]]". This is weird when you think about it, since humans in the future routinely live to be over a hundred and remain productive members of society.

* A popular story about UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar tells of him standing in front of a statue of UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat on his 32nd birthday and weeping, since Alexander had conquered most of his known world by the time of his death (at 32), while Caesar has accomplished nothing comparable at the same age. Caesar would then go on to become famous as, well, Julius Caesar.

* ''Film/TheFortyYearOldVersion'': Washed-up playwright Radha's upcoming 40th birthday is what causes her to rediscover her love for rapping.

Oh, fuck (oh), how am I thirty? (Oh!)

* ''Film/CitySlickers'': Mitch turns 39 early in the movie, and he's depressed about being close to turning 40, which isn't helped by the fact when he visits his son's class, his son is ashamed of what Mitch does for a living (selling advertising spots for radio):
-->'''Mitch''': Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you're a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money, and you think to yourself, "What happened to my twenties?" Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery. Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud, but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before. And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering "how come the kids don't call?" By your eighties, you've had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can't stand but who you call mama. Any questions?

->''As I'm flirting with forty''
->''There's no time to wait''
->''And I can't help but feel''
->''I'm already too late!''

-->''When he was 27, my granddad fought in Vietnam''
-->''When I was 27, I built a birdhouse with my mom''
-->''Oh, fuck (oh), how am I thirty? (Oh!)''

--->''They're singing, "Happy birthday"''
--->''You just wanna lay down and cry''
--->''Not just another birthday, it's 30/90, hey!''

--> '''Alison''': ''There's you''
-->''And there's me''
-->''But now I'm the one who?s forty-three''
-->''And stuck''
-->''I can't find my way through!''
-->''Just like you''
-->''Am I just like you?''

-->''As I'm flirting with forty''
-->''There's no time to wait''
-->''And I can't help but feel''
-->''I'm already too late!''