Milestones

Magic: the Gathering’s 25th anniversary is this year. Which is great, I mean, I have fun with it, and I wish it all the best. But there’s this common phrase that keeps getting tossed around, whether that be in official articles or fan forums: “Happy twenty-fifth, Magic. Here’s to twenty-five more.”

Of course this is not only a Magic-related phrase. Anniversaries, especially of companies, like to use this phrase too. It’s a good phrase, wishing longevity upon the birthday boy/girl/nongendered pronoun/company and an implication of hoping that the next set of years will be just like the previous one.

But that’s a troublesome hope, isn’t it? A lot of companies have pretty troublesome periods. At one point in Magic’s history, for example, the designers messed up so poorly and so many people stopped playing that the entire design team was called into a meeting and yelled at. Do we really want to wish getting yelled at on anyone?

And then there’s also the problem of incredibly long anniversaries. Ohio’s bicentennial was fifteen years ago, but when people say “Here’s to two hundred more,” it feels to me like they’ve forgotten just how long two-hundred years is. At this point, though, social convention frowns on anything else. If you say, “Happy twenty-fifth, Magic. Here’s to another five more,” it sounds like you’re wishing ruin, instead of, you know, hoping they make it to the next milestone.

My goal, the reason I started this blog, was because I wanted to write one post a week for a year (anything after that is just gravy). I wrote this post because it’s the twentieth post on Not So Secret, and I wanted to think of a good way to celebrate. So happy twentieth post, Not So Secret. Here’s to thirty-two more.

-F