I turned 33 the other day.

“That’s the same age Jesus was when he died,” someone pointed out.

Of course, this snarky comment made me reflect on all the things I haven’t accomplished in life. Like most people my age, I generally operate under the assumption that I have plenty of time to accomplish these things. But birthdays always instill a sense of urgency, and for a brief moment, as I thought about Jesus and all the things he’d accomplished by the time he was 33, I felt a little depressed. The feeling passed, as it always does, and when someone asked me whether I’d had a good birthday, and whether I’d done anything exciting, I said, yes, it had been a good birthday and, no, I hadn’t done anything exciting.

My birthday was actually notable for its total lack of excitement. I rode my new bike, went out for dinner and went to bed. And that was fine with me. At this point, the last thing I want on my birthday is excitement. I figure any birthday that doesn’t involve getting robbed at gunpoint is a pretty good one.

The problem with getting robbed at gunpoint on your birthday is that every time you have a birthday you remember the time you got robbed at gunpoint on your birthday. There are other times when I think about getting robbed at gunpoint, like when panhandlers emerge from the shadows and ask for money, or sketchy-looking pedestrians walk too closely behind me. Even so, there’s nothing quite like my birthday to bring back my memories of getting robbed at gunpoint.

The mugging was a pretty simple affair, and I’m always fairly quick to tell people that, as terrifying as it was, I wasn’t hurt in any way. I was living in Birmingham, Ala., at the time, and after dinner at a seafood restaurant and a trip to the Blue Monkey, a bar I’d always wanted to visit simply because it’s called the Blue Monkey, I decided that what I really wanted to do was go to my favorite bar in the world, The Garage Cafe. It seemed like the perfect way to end the evening, and when we exited The Garage, after drinking beer out on the patio, I was in a really good mood.

Then, as we walked to the car, a man jumped out of the alleyway and grabbed my friend. For a moment, I thought that someone we knew had seen us, and was playing a prank, and I stood there, dumbly, waiting for this masked jokester to reveal himself. The next thing I knew (because some of what happened I don’t remember at all, like handing over my wallet), my friend and I were both lying on a lawn. The robber, whom I’ll refer to from here on out as the crackhead thief, was demanding our money. This was deeply confusing, as I’d already given the crackhead thief my wallet, and my friend had given him her purse. So I didn’t understand why he was making us lie on the lawn, waving a gun around, and yelling at us to give him our money, as we’d already given him our money and didn’t have any more.

Instead of screaming, or flipping out, I became very calm. I wanted to help. I wanted to give the crackhead thief whatever he wanted; if I did that, maybe he’d leave, and I really, really wanted him to leave. As my friend whimpered away, I said, “You have our money. You already took our money.” “Where’s the money?” “You have it. You took my money already.” But it’s tough to reason with crackhead thieves, and now that I think about it, crackhead thieves probably like it better when you act all terrified and freaked out. Instead, I sounded kind of like a bored high school teacher, and apparently the crackhead thief was sick of listening to me. He leaned over, yelled at me to shut up, and placed the gun against my head.

I stopped talking immediately. As I said, I wanted to help, and if the crackhead thief didn’t want to hear my voice anymore, well, I’d try not to trouble him with the sound of my voice. I cannot tell you how long the gun remained there, but it was long enough for my brain to finally register that the crackhead thief could shoot me. It was long enough for me to consider the possibility of dying. And it was long enough for me to feel sad about this, because I really didn’t want to die.

After a few more menacing comments, the crackhead thief ran away. We got up, went back to The Garage, and called the police. (No, they never caught him.) As we waited, my friend angrily lamented the loss of her new purse. “I just bought that!” she yelled. But my reaction was much different. I didn’t feel angry at all. I simply felt happy to be alive. That isn’t to say that I never felt angry about what happened, or that I don’t sometimes feel angry about it, even now. For a long time, my birthday would arrive and dredge up these lingering feelings of anger. But my anger has faded over time, and on my birthday I’m more likely to remember those initial moments after the crackhead thief fled, and think, “Man, am I happy to be alive!”

Which is how it should be, I think.

Foss Forward makes a weekly appearance in print, in The Gazette’s Saturday Lifestyles section.