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Right now, at this very moment, part of me wishes I were 13 again. I fully acknowledge the masochistic implications of such a statement and recognize that it romanticizes the youthfulness every person not named Michael Jackson eventually loses to adulthood, but I just can’t shake the feeling. As George Orwell famously observed, autobiographical writing must offer embarrassment because it vouches for truth, and so I surrender the admission that I secretly wish I was born in 1993 so I would be or would turn 13 this year.

That way, I could have a bar mitzvah. As the son of a Jewish father and a Christian mother, I never fit in with organized religion, in large part because orthodox Jews look to their mothers for religious authenticity while cultural Christianity tends to be patrilineal. Though my family history is immensely interesting, involving a Bolshevik-revolutionary author, the inventor of the Trachtenberg mathematical system and the U.S. president commonly credited with freeing the slaves, it has never struck me as one particularly interested in any synagogue or church.

When I turned 12, my parents left it up to me to decide whether I wanted to have a bar mitzvah, and I never got the feeling they really cared either way. I probably could have persuaded them to throw me a quinceañera when I turned 15, had I been a girl. When I realized I cared as little as they did about religious affiliation, I dropped the idea and that was that.

After seeing the trailer for “Keeping Up With the Steins,” I realized I made a mistake. The film, which opens Friday, revolves around one Jewish family’s attempt to throw a bar mitzvah party for its son that can compare to that of a rival neighbor’s, which, judging from the trailer, involves a yacht bigger than the Titanic and costs half a million dollars. The movie satirizes bar mitzvah culture, focusing on the elaborately gaudy parties parents throw for their children after the religious ceremony. It also comes mere months after the release of “Bar Mitzvah Disco,” a coffee-table book featuring photographs of bar and bat mitzvah parties from the 1970s and ’80s.

Needless to say, the combination of preteens, dress clothes and a corny DJ playing hits such as “The Electric Slide” and “Y.M.C.A.” makes for easy comedy no matter the decade. In 1997, when I actually was 13, I went to dozens of these parties, and at this point, only two stand out in my memory. One family actually did rent out a yacht, and another created a 1950s-diner-themed party, at which The Drifters (at least the ones still alive) performed. Because I wasn’t competing against them, I actually enjoyed those parties, even learning the “Macarena” dance in the process.

With the sudden attention that lavish bar mitzvah parties are getting, coupled with the success of TV shows such as “My Super Sweet 16,” I can only imagine what my bar mitzvah party could have been like. Technically, I’m still eligible to have one since I’m a religious free agent, but somehow the necessary goofiness that accompanies such events no longer applies now that I’ve already established the foundation of taste I will carry with me forever. I’m comfortable enough with myself that the whole point of having a bar mitzvah party, in which a 13-year-old pretends he’s an adult, is lost. There’s a reason wedding photos are not usually socially awkward.

Though I haven’t yet seen “Keeping Up With the Steins,” I have no doubt it will climax not with a lavish party but with a scene of realization in which the superficialities are put aside to recognize a spiritual connection with Judaism and family. Meanwhile, I will only think about my bar mitzvah that never was.

Turning 13 now and influenced by the astounding commercialization of adolescent birthdays, a hypothetical preteen Jake Tracer would probably have a bar mitzvah. While I rejected it for the right reasons in ’97, I would accept it for the wrong reasons now. The drive to grow up more quickly by competing with my peers would have appealed to a younger me. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’d be any more adult because of it.