h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've found that most of the milestone birthdays are based around things you become allowed to do. I know a lot of people that felt compelled to buy a lottery ticket the day they were able to and to start drinking on their 18th (it's certainly not as if anyone had tried that before they hit 18...).
21 was a landmark for me, but that's because it was decided by the family that 21 was a landmark year so I should do something memorable. So I fell out of a plane. Quite a birthday party, that (but almost scaring your mother to death isn't something I can recommend).
It's not the birthdays that mean anything to me, it's the milestones. The first time you leave home, the first time someone asks you for ID, your first time driving, graduations and such, then if you have children you get all their special milestones too. Rites of passage and all that. There's not any one age that I felt a real change, it was a number of contributing things occurring over a long period.
Having said that, my 23rd year has been my most eventuful by far.

As for the best age, it depends on your tastes, surely. I'd argue right now that my youth is quite a wonderful thing and that I'll miss this life when it's gone, but I'm likely to want to settle down and take up some more sedate hobbies soon enough. So long as you're doing what you love and you're not restricted in any significant physical or mental way in your activities, I don't see why there needs to be a best age.
That sounds like a rotten way to live, constantly pining for the past or wishing your life away for the future.

But of course, kid's TV was better in my day. TMNT and Knightmare? Yes please.

Knightmare? Oooh, yes!

23/24 was an eventful time of life for me too. Lots of unheaval as I started to really figure out who I am, what makes me tick and things that make me happy. Perhaps I'll have another epiphany later in life too, but right now I'm happy with the one I've got.

I totally agree. I don't think there is such a thing as a "best Age" I think nature does its best to point us to what is best in every age.

Living the way we do this days with little to do with Nature we probably miss or ignore this hints or maybe take note when we should not have...

You sound like the kind of person who would have a wise and fruitful old age. Enjoy the trip!