I turned 12 this week - what a pleasant way to put it. When you're young, birthdays seem to take forever to come around, but as you progress in life, there really do seem to be too many of them, and they just don't mean so much, and who cares what little kids want, anyway?
As a kid, certainly, the difference between 2 and 4 is unbridgeable, and only an 8 year old studiously avoids the 5 year old with whom there is nothing in common, but after a few decades, these differences settle down, and measuring differences in ages by years doesn't quite properly suggest what is a big gap and what is insignificant.
To cut down on the (alas) big numbers involved when using years as a measure, and to add a suggestive token to the system, we turn to the Presidential Timber system of measuring age.
In this system, we can imagine viewing the history of the country recorded in the rings of a tree (of course, we had to saw the tree down to see the rings, but that's progress!). Perhaps it is a cherry tree, the cherry tree that George Washington did NOT actually chop down. In fact, let us imagine that Washington actually planted the tree when he took office...in 1789, (not 1776, for goodness sake!) The tree has lived now for 220 years, but it is a peculiar tree, and only begins a new growth ring when a new president is elected. Thus, there are now 44 rings in the tree, and each person's life can be traced out through some section of those rings.
A person's age, in the Presidential Timber system, is simply the number of presidents who have been in office during that person's life. This explains why I recently "presidentially" turned 12. If I look back on my life, it is very interesting to recall the successive presidents who "presided" over each stage of my life. Without thinking about it explicitly, I certain think of my "Johnson years" and what I was doing during my "Ford period". National events, all of which are really important only insofar as the affect me, are neatly organized in this way.
Since one of the attractions of astrology is the use of "signs" to classify people, we can adopt a similar gimmick, and give each person the sign of the president who was in office when they were born. I, for example, was born under the "sign" of Harry Truman, so I expect you to "Show Me!", and I am a thrifty, no-nonsense kind of person whom people often underestimate. And I don't like people named Dewey.The virtues of this system are plain. You don't get older too fast, and when you do, so does everyone else, and they throw a big party in DC at a regularly scheduled time, and you don't actually have to go if you don't feel like it.
Moreover, by using the presidential timber system, you can quickly see when you are likely to have little in common with other people. It's safe to say that a person separated from you by more than, say 2 or 3 presidents has not had the same experiences or memories you have. While partial and double terms in office can affect this counting system, it's still a decent rule of thumb; if I meet a fellow Trumanian or a sibling Eisenhowerian or a cousinly Kennedian, I know where I stand. Dealing with Johnsonians and Nixonians becomes less familial, while Fordites and Carterites are clearly strangers and Reaganians and Bushies might as well be from Mars.
We salute this new and sensible system for measuring age, and categorizing generations!