Happy Birthday To Me?

Yup, that is me! My first birthday party, and looking decidedly disconcerted. set me up for a lifetime of birthdays that never quite added up to expectation. I try to stop expecting, but that never really works. don't get me wrong, i have had some wonderful birthdays, and some great times, but there is always something that goes slightly wrong and colours the memory. i really don't know what i expect to happen, i can never decide on what i want my birthday to be, but i always expect magic!

surprisingly, the problem has quite often been the padding on my mother's dining room table. she has this quilted padding that has always been there to protect the table from spills and hot things. i have lost count of the number of birthdays when one kid has noticed this and accused me of having baby changing pad on the table, and that becomes the only thing that anyone can discuss for the entire meal. it was usually the kid who was worried about the coolness of attending my party and so had to make themselves look cooler than me on my birthday. nothing like feeling like a loser on your birthday.

this could so easily turn into a list of slights and bad manners (on the part of some "friends"), and people being too "cool" to participate in the activities, but i am trying to avoid that today, so lets go through some of the fun times, which have mainly happened with my best friends. They never make me look uncool, because they insist on all acting crazy and to hell with the rest of them!

one time in high school, Lindsay and Amanda made a monopoly board out of my neighbourhood, each square of the sidewalk was one square on the board, and Linds went around on roller blades as banker. sooo much fun! unfortunately it got cold and we had to cut the game short to go inside, but it was a really cool idea and we had fun inside warming up too!

other years we have gone out to dinner wearing silly costumes, and one year in university we were too busy to celebrate anyone's birthday, so we had a mass birthday party and played all the traditional games, pin the tail on the donkey, charades, musical chairs, telephone, and the infamous present exchange where we regifted anything that we had received as a present but had no need for, like a candle shaped like a rock, or weird soap flakes.

my birthdays in victoria were a bit more hit and miss, first year we went out to a club and one friend hit me and knocked me down in her mad flight away from a homeless man on the way in, so i started the night with a sprained ankle, then some girl almost died of a drug overdose at our table. fun times. the next year i have no idea what i did for my birthday, other than clean the kitchen floor on my hands and knees (it really needed it). and then the year after that, we all went out to dinner at a nice restaurant/brew pub and had a grand time. the fun happened later that night when my roomate and i vied for the bathroom when we realized we were alergic to unpasturized beer, and one of my friends ended up in the hospital for a week. great time had by all!

Well, i guess if my birthdays aren't exactly up to my expectations, they are at least fairly memorable! I am planning on making the most of today, and hopefully get together with friends this weekend for some real celebrating!

Happy Birthday to Me!