My Birthday
Two days ago, I celebrated (tolerated) turning sixty-nine years old.
The Seeds of Narcissism
The earliest birthday I can remember was my fourth. There was a party with kids from my block and of course, they brought presents. After I opened them, I took the gifts and myself into the den and shut the door. My mother came in and said the children were asking where I was. “Tell them to go home,” I replied.
Early Onset Dementia
Two years later, after I blew out the candles on my cake, my mother asked me if I liked being six. “I don’t like it at all. I take the number five bus home from school” I complained. “How am I going to remember now?”
Be Wary
A good trick to pull on someone’s “special day” is to take them to one of those chain restaurants and tell the staff in advance that it’s their birthday. I trusted that my girlfriend at the time would never do that under threat that it could be returned. But she did. Four waiters at Chi-Chi’s sang Happy Birthday in phonetic Spanish, delivering a burrito with a candle stuck in it.
Bad Enough With Four People
Gordon Lightfoot’s birthday is the day before mine. One time we were doing a show on November 18, and someone in the audience yelled, “Happy Birthday Gord.” “It’s not my birthday” he said “it’s Mike’s”Very few people get to hear a crowd of two thousand people sing Happy Birthday to them. I turned around on my piano bench and faced the back of the stage. I’m a low-profile guy for the most part. “Then you’re in the wrong business,” I’ve heard more than once.
Think Of All I Would Have Missed
Flying into Boise Idaho on my twenty-ninth birthday, the Lear Jet we were traveling in was hit by lightning. These executive jets have a reassuring roar that lets you know the engines are still working. Everything went silent. I thought I was going to go out the same day I came in. The roar returned, and we landed safely but not without some serious damage to the airplane.
Conclusion
What’s my point? Nothing. Just a way to thread five anecdotes together.
Cheers