Birthdays

Despite the fact that my birthday is almost two months away, I've been thinking a lot about birthdays lately. When you really think about them, they're kind of weird - everyone ages. Well, unless they're dead. I guess birthdays are more of a way to celebrate another year of survival? I think I'm feeling a little morbid tonight. Anyway, I've witnessed a few pretty pathetic birthdays/birthday parties in my time, and so here is my list, of saddest/morbidest/most pathetic birthdays I've ever seen.

1) "No, I'm the ballerina."

This one is a little hard to remember the particulars of, since I think I was about 4 or 5. However, my whole class (so I must've been in kindergarten, I guess?) was at some girl's birthday at chuck e. cheese or a place like that, and her cake had various girly-girl icing figures on it. Among them was a ballerina and a princess. Somehow we all got into assigning ourselves to the various figures on the cake, and it came down to the ballerina and the princess, and me and the birthday girl. I REALLY wanted to be the ballerina, because of my completely hilarious conviction that I would one day grow to be a graceful dancer. However, the birthday girl also wanted to be the ballerina. So, I did the only logical thing to do: I completely refused to give in, and brought it to a vote - wasn't it fair that the birthday girl be the princess, and I be the ballerina? The whole room agreed. The birthday girl accepted her crown through tears. And I was the ballerina.*

I should be a politician.

*I should note that this is perhaps one of my most frequently told stories. But it is also one of my most embarrassing, because really. What a bitchy thing to do.

2) The Lip Balm Incident

This was in Arizona, and I believe it was the 11th or 12th birthday of a girl named Tyler, who I didn't really like, but since we were in the same class, I wound up going to her birthday party anyway. The invitations, handmade by her mother, informed the recipient that the party would involve fun activities such as making your own handmade lipbalm. When I got to the party, I was pleasantly surprised. Tyler's mom was a very pleasant woman, and it seemed obvious to me that they both were trying very hard. We flocked around the modest and square background, eating pizza and chatting. Well, other people chatted. I stood in a corner and tried to look cool. Finally came the lipbalm making. We all got little tins which we would decorate later. Tyler's mom stood by and mixed everything, and we all shuffled through a line, picking out oils in order to each have a unique flavor in ours. (I got plain mint.) Later, as we were sitting on benches admiring our (Tyler's mom's) handiwork, and decorating the tins, all the girls started talking about how, now that they had what they came for, they really wanted to leave. "Yeah," said one girl, "I really only came because I wanted lipbalm. I don't really like her. Do you want to go?" "No," said someone else. "Let's wait for the cake."

Ouch. I didn't really like her either, but this seemed a little cruel to me. And there's something that always gets me about people who try really hard to be accepted but for whatever reason just...aren't.

3) Stefi and Rachel's Co-Birthday Extravaganza

Stefi and Rachel were both briefly my friends, in that way that in Arizona, I didn't hold on to friends for more than a couple months at a time. Stefi's parents owned the only Chinese restaurant in town, a place my family didn't frequently visit due to the unnervingly frequent failures it received from the inspectors at the health department. Stefi was also rather stuck up. Rachel was really sweet, and saw a kindred spirit in the equally detail-oriented Stefi. Soon after Rachel moved to Sedona, she and Stefi were best friends, and I was once again eating lunch in the classroom, hiding from all my classmates.

In addition to being bffs, Stefi and Rachel had birthdays only about a week apart. So, they co-planned a co-birthday, inviting everyone in the class. The party was to be held at Stefi's family restaurant - they were going to shut it down for us for the day, and feed everybody free lunch. When, after I breathlessly watched Stefi pass out the invitations one morning, she finally reached my desk and handed me an invite, I was unduly excited. They had both been my friends, after all, and I thought that maybe this meant we could all be friends. However, Stefi paused in the act of handing me my invitation, holding in the air directly in front of my face as I sat at my desk. "Here's your invitation," she said flatly. "We weren't going to invite you, but it looks like there'll be room after all. My parents thought it would be rude not to let you come." Gosh. Thanks.

Finally, the day arrived. I'd like to say that I was too proud to go, but I wasn't. I showed up right on time. I was the first to get there, so I handed them my present and sat at their table, though Stefi warned me that when other people got there I would have to let her real friends sit with them. (Rachel was notably silent during these animosity-laden exchanges. I'll never know what she thought of it all.) So we sat and waited. And waited. And waited some more. The appetizers sitting on all the tables began to cool. The lunch Stefi's parents had made for sixty was starting to dry out. Finally, after about an hour, they gave up and served the food, cut the cake, and opened my solitary present. Rachel looked sad, but Stefi looked defiantly crushed - she was hurt, but way too proud to show it. On the drive back home I passed a group of the kids who were supposed to have been there zipping around on skateboards, clearly with nothing better to do. This event has always stuck in my mind, for several reasons - one, the sweet vindication of being the grudgingly invited guest who turned out to be the only guest; two, the expense of all that wasted food; and three, the fact that no one at school ever brought it up. It was the party that never happened.

4) My Eighteenth Birthday

I spent my eighteenth birthday at my uncle's funeral. It was a depressing entrance into adulthood, coupled with a healthy reminder of my own mortality. Does anything else really need to be said?

5) My Nineteenth Birthday

This one isn't so bad, but on June 25, 2009, Micheal Jackson and Farrah Fawcett both died. This second intrusion of death into my birthday has me irrationally worried about this year, when I will finally turn 20. After all, once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.