Birthday Memories

I'm a couple of days late...so let's just consider this a Belated Birthday Memories List. But here are the 5 greatest birthday memories I have...

5) My First (and only) Birthday Slumber Party, 1978: It's probably not a wise idea to have 10 second grade boys in one house for an entire night. There were no DVD players, no X-Box (although I did have an Atari 2600), or other mass-entertainment apparati (is that a word?). Among the memories from that night are my parents making us play some stupid balloon popping game (which wound up lasting for hours - bad move on their part) and Reginald Stinson wetting his sleeping bag.

4) A Bad Cake Decision, 1976: For 36 years now, my mother has been the model of consistency when it came to birthday cakes. Every year (even the four years I was in college), mom managed to deliver with her WONDERFUL chocolate cake...except for the year 1976. My mother, who was a history teacher, was enamored with the United States' Bicentennial celebration...and assumed her six year old son would be as well. So...instead of baking a chocolate cake that year, I got a crappy red, white, and blue cake...complete with flags, patriotic soldiers, you name it. Heck, if she could've found a white wig and a Thomas Jefferson costume that fit a fat 6-year old, she would've put me in that as well.

3) Special Delivery, 1989: On January 30, 1989, West Texas experienced an ice storm that stretched the length of I-20 all the way to Fort Worth. I was a freshman at ACU, but my parents had planned to come out to help me celebrate my birthday. But with the roads as treacherous as they were, I didn't expect to see them. Lo and behold, on the morning of January 31st, Mom and Dad pulled into the parking lot of Mabee Dorm on the campus of ACU. Mom was driving her Pontiac; Dad was driving my birthday present...a 1985 Dodge Daytona. Boy, did that escalate me to Ladies Man status!

2) Chris Mowry & Joe Tomme, EVERY year I had a birthday party: I mentioned previously that every year, with the exception of 1976, Mom would bake a chocolate cake. No one in the world had a problem with that...except my high-maintenance pal Chris Mowry. He hated chocolate and refused to eat it. So my mother would bake a chocolate cake...and then would make two white cupcakes for Chris Mowry. The other constant during birthday parties was Joe Tomme. While it was a mystery what you were going to get from the other kids, you ALWAYS knew what to expect from Joe: a kite. And not JUST the kite...but a kite wrapped up in the comics from the Sunday newspaper.

1) The Best of All, 2000: It was the day I found out I was going to be a daddy. Robin got me a birthday card that was signed: "Love Robin...and the baby."

Fell free to share your own!