The half-way mark . . . hopefully
I’m trying for the life of me to remember birthdays from my childhood, but can’t. Only scraps of memories, I know I had one in Shakey’s Pizza in California. I also know that for another one, for my 14th, me and several friends were going to go see “Butch and Sundance: The Early Days” and had to be driven all the way to Dayton because it was on limited release apparently, only to discover that it alternated times with another movie and, so, we couldn’t see it. Instead, we all saw the Peter Sellers version of “The Prisoner of Zenda.” Let’s just say that “The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu” is a much better movie.
Shortly after that, I know I saw “Alien” and then moved to Savannah, parents being properly separated and all. And the rest is history.
None of which explains what I did for all the other birthdays.
I remember on my 6th or 7th birthday, my father was in Viet Nam and he sent me an AM radio for a present. At first, I thought since it was from Viet Nam it meant that I would pick up only Vietnamese stations and, as proof that I haven’t really changed much in the ensuing decades, I thought that was really great and was VERY disappointed when I turned it on and just heard the same old American stations.
The radio was a blue ball — about the size of a softball — and it had a big, long chain attached to it like you could swing it while you danced or something. You can see the photos I found online . . . I loved that radio.
The only other birthday I remember was as a young adult. Jana and I were living in Brooklyn and she took me to a seafood restaurant at the South Street Seaport. I remember it being very, very expensive and I had scallops for my first time. Later, in our apartment, I threw up scallops again and again for my first time — pretty convinced, we were, that I was allergic to them. I eat scallops nowadays and don’t throw up ever.
The other memorable part of that evening happened when we woke up the next morning and found one of our windows — about 8 floors up in an alley — wide open and our wine carafe full of change gone. As near as we could ascertain, some goofball went down the fire escape and shimmied over to a slightly open window, came in, took our change and left. Perhaps my vomiting scared the crap out of him because he didn’t take the safe way out the window actually on the fire escape or out the front door, but went back out the same window and shimmied on the ledge back to the fire escape. That’s stupid, right? Probably a drug addict, you can only expect so much care for personal safety from them.
At least, I think all that happened on my birthday. I’m 43, the brain is going, sometimes if information is retained, it’s all wrong.
Anyhow, I don’t usually make a big deal out of my birthdays. I remember as a kid I was sorta forced to have big parties, I do remember that, and I think this is a reaction to my upbringing . . . as so much of my adulthood is. I usually just look at my birthday as a quiet, private sort of thing. With cake.
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