Thirty-five.

Just in case you needed to know, thirty-five has its own Wikipedia page. Yep. It says pretty dryly, “35 (thirty-five) is the natural number following 34 and preceding 36.”

Looks like someone has some time on his or her hands.

I’m not interested in following this person’s trail of boredom, although I’m guessing it has been happening for some time because a lot of other numbers have pages, too. I can tell you with certainty that there’s no page for 2,005,017. I looked. Although, typing that number into Google will bring up IRS Notice cc-2005-017, which speaks to the topic of “Interim Procedures for ‘Ballard’ Type Issues.” Now there’s a reverse-the-earth-on-its-axis effort on the part of the federal government, wouldn’t you say? What is a ballard, anyway? I suppose I could read the document and find out.

Nah. For the moment, I’d rather stay focused on the number thirty-five.

Did you know that thirty-five is the atomic number of bromine? Of course you did. Everyone knows that. But I’ll bet you didn’t know that 35 mm film is actually 34.98 mm wide, and it was first introduced by Thomas Edison and William Dickson back in 1892, although apparently it was noted at the time as 1.375 inches.

I was thirty-five years old when I was ordained. It’s also the last time I remember being relatively pain free in my body. Now I have back and knee pain like crazy, and I also get pretty severe migraines.

The BBC offered an article in 2017 suggesting by data collected from a few various surveys that one is officially considered boring and old sometime in the mid-thirties. Thirty-five, to be precise, was marked as the critical age for no longer being considered young. I was glad to read that, because I was under the impression that the pastoral office was killing me physically. Turns out it’s the number thirty-five.

The results from a University of Kent study suggested that at age thirty-five, men reach “peak loneliness” and women reach “peak boring.” It’s also noted as the age when folks are more likely to begin hating their jobs.

None of these aforementioned particulars much matter in the case of the J.P. Wiser’s edition before me. Having “35-years-old” on the label communicates anything but lackluster or deleterious. Instead, the number thirty-five heralds a numerological vantage of depth and experience that many whiskies might covet but few can claim. And when it comes to this whisky, the envy is merited.

The nose is a sweet and creamy custard of vanilla and tangerines stirred into a cup of light-roast coffee. In the mouth, the cream continues, but adds to the regimen a spryness of cinnamon and oak.

The finish is a medium draw of overly ripened pineapple, cocoa powder, and cinnamon.

J.P. Wiser’s has done a splendid thing here, and if anything, they’ve given those of us noticing the wheels beginning to fall off a trophy dram to celebrate the accomplishments that come along in the years following thirty-five—careers, a little more money for better booze, lasting love, a few kids, a little less money for better booze, a few more kids, a lot less money for booze, wisdom, and so many other things that the club-hopping twenty-something millennials are flittering away to a much more distant future under the fleeting guise of “youth.” Personally, I look back on my twenties and remember them as friend-filled and interesting, but from my current perspective, I now recall them as lonely and, in most circumstances, less than inspiring. It’s only in the current time that life is about as interesting as it gets. With four kids running around, I’m never alone. And with everything else involved with marriage and parenting, I’m rarely bored.

So, call me old if you’d like. Just know that in the grand scheme, a good many things get better with age. The J.P. Wiser’s 35-years-old Canadian Whisky is iconic of this truth.