My Best Birthday

Not to slag on the Reverend, but for a bit of my egocentric youth, I truly thought that we got a half-day off from school because of my birthday, not Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s. Especially the year I got to have a birthday party in the afternoon just after we came home from school.

I’m pretty sure I insisted on Jem everything (or maybe Barbie and the Rockers?) … plates, napkins, little cardboard cutout stuck to the top of the cake. And I’m pretty sure it was awesome. I don’t actually remember too much about the party or who was there besides my little sister Kat, my cousins S & O, and my on-off-on-off-on-off-way off BFF JB. I just remember—like G Love—the presents and the cake and the all-about-me-ness of the day.

So for a long, long while, that birthday was my favorite. Until last year. When I turned THIRTY.

It’s common knowledge that I don’t look 30, and working around the 18-24 demo actually helps. I blend in or something. So I was looking forward to being 30, leaving my angsty/unsettled/nomadic twenties behind. I crowed about my age to anyone who asked (and to a few folks who didn’t) and delighted in their reactions, which were always the same: “Really. No way! You certainly don’t look 30! Congratulations!” It was about a week of build-up and it was awesome.

Then came the big day—a day off from work (now I know to give credit where credit is due … thank you, Dr. King, but not just for my day off) that consisted of sleeping late, visiting Old Navy, making cupcakes for my dear friend so I could take them to her and meet her three-week-old daughter, and spending an inordinate amount of time getting ready to go out. A group of 10 or so of my friends met up at the Irish pub in town for dinner and I was showered w/presents even after I insisted I didn’t want anything but a homemade cake. It was lots of fun.

And then. Things. Got. Interesting.

A friend of mine shares my birthday, and it was his twenty-first. G insisted that I merge my party with his, and I figured, what the hell … you’re only thirty once, and it might be the last time you get to drink too much and act like an idiot without being judged for being too old for that kind of behavior. So we all—both parties—met up at the bar where all the theatre folk go. And then we went other places. And people bought us both drinks. And bought us more drinks. And The Boy, who had to be out of town for work, came home (on a much-delayed flight) at 2A to find his wife happy, barely coherent, and subsequently unable to go to work until 1P the next day. (I know the story seems anticlimactic, but when you … well … can’t quite remember what happened between 10P and 2A, it seems a little gauche to make stuff up.)

So even though I paid for it afterwards, I know that so far, my thirtieth birthday was the best. I rang out my twenties in rare form, and don’t need to drink that much in one evening ever again. Everybody wins!