When I was younger, I used to buy clothes that were too big for me, thinking that my current growth rate would eventually cause the clothes to fit perfectly.  While this was true for a while, I stopped growing when I was about 16 or 17, so this trend of buying big clothes should've stopped.  It didn't.  In college, I continued to buy clothes that were too big.  Now, some 4-5 years later, I still own some of these clothes [1], and they still don't fit.  My 32 x 34 pants are still at least 2 inches too long.  I always wear a belt because all my pants are at least 1 inch too wide [2]. 

But in a surprising turn of events, I might finally be growing into my 7-year-old clothes.  But it's not because I'm growing in the vertical direction; it's because I'm "growing" in the horizontal direction.  I've reached my maximum height, so there's only one other thing that can happen:  I'll get fatter.  I'm not too concerned yet because I'm relatively active and I have a supernatural metabolism.  But I'm dreading the year 2012, which is when I'll officially be over the hill.  That's right, 30 years old.  I've been told by several people that the second you hit the age of 30 (or the age of 30 hits you), your metabolism drops from 100% to 5%, so your weight gain matches your diet.  That's my worst nightmare:  Not that I'll be fat, but that I won't be able to eat candy anymore. 

[1] I find it extremely gratifying that I'm able to wear clothes for several years before they wear out or I get sick of them.  The whole time I was growing up, I had to get new clothes and new shoes all the time.  This sounds like a good thing, but it basically meant I got a lot of cheap things and hand-me-downs that didn't fit me one way or the other.  So at any given moment, there was a good chance I was wearing my dad's old pants that were too big for me and last summer's new t-shirt which was painfully too small for me.  Nowadays, I wear my $20 jeans until they disintegrate and my $10 shirts until they literally become last decade's style.  And I'm extremely proud of that. 

[2] There's something very wrong with the variety of clothes sizes.  All my life, I've never fit into the pants that were on the shelf.  The 30s are too tight and the 32s are too loose.  The 32s are too short and the 34s are too long.  I need 31 x 33!  Why don't they make my size?  Some stores occasionally have a single pair of oddly-sized pants, but they're usually not the right odd sizes (i.e. 31 x 30 or 32 x 33).  When will I be a normal size?  I've been waiting for this my whole life. #lifestyle