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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Biography / Autobiography
- Published: 09/21/2012
Birthday Blues
Born 1980, F, from St Petersburg Florida, United StatesMy birthday party was irrelevant, having consisted of having a store bought cupcake with one candle in it shoved in my face whilst traveling in a fully packed minivan with a load of pissed off Italians that called themselves my family. Granted, it was a kind gesture in their eyes, giving the bastard child of a defunct marriage a paltry birthday token.
We were coming from an uncle's party in the middle of suburbia, Maryland. His birthday wasn't for three weeks and the fact that his wife was due to give birth to their second child, bringing them closer to the ideal ratio of 2.3 was somehow more important to the family than my upcoming 'Big one-two'.
Weeks in advance I had asked my step-father, Sal, if I could go to my friend’s vacation cabin with her for my birthday. His response was to pull an envelope with a civil war photograph out of a drawer and explain to me in great detail about how much it had cost him, the great lengths he had gone to get it, and how disappointed this uncle would be if I didn't show up for his premature birthday party. When I argued that it was going to be my actual birthday, I was shot down like a poor duck in that ever popular game, and he was the sly snickering dog laughing at me from behind the bushes. In all essence the answer was a flat out NO. I could have rebelled, but knew better than to test the waters, because as innocuous as this man seemed on the outside, he had a penchant for slapping around women and children who got on his bad side.
His parents who were going to drive the two hundred some odd miles were no better, enforcing ridiculous double standards and contradictions between myself and their "natural" grandchildren. Enough time spent on that matter, just enough to show that I was leading a highly oppressed life with a family that was constantly keeping me at an arm's length.
So I decided to go with the flow, grin and bear it and put my best face forward, insert your cliché here. After telling my friend Mindy that it was a no go, I proceeded to pack for the trip that was surely going to be greater than the day of my birth. We were going to Frederick, Maryland. I don’t' remember much about the ride over except that we had to get up early. My siblings Christine and Stan, being 15 and 14, slept easily while I could barely get a wink in edgewise, between the inane banter of the noodle-heads operating the vehicle, and the extreme right wing news station blaring from the tinny speakers. I watched the mountainous landscape roll by wondering if this was all there was ever going to be in my life, permanently stuck between childhood and adulthood, ruled over by a sadistic tyrant who wanted to micro-control every aspect of my being. A life devoid of joy and discovery, where shame and regret were the main course served cold. I watched the countryside roll by, its houses dark with sleeping inhabitants who surely led normal lives.
Fast forward to our arrival at the surprise party. We were greeted by an aunt at a rented cabin in a state park. Friends of the uncle were milling about enjoying beers and conversation amidst the shrieks and yelps of their little tax deductions. I scanned the room to find that there was nobody even close to my age there. It seemed as if everybody in the room was staring at me, wondering what this strange girl was doing here, obviously out of her age group. I shrugged it off and made my way to a table where my brother was sitting.
"This really blows." I said to him looking at the cracked wood paneled floor. "I can't believe that I didn't try harder to get out of this. I have no idea who any of these people are. There's not anyone even interesting enough to talk to."
Stan nodded. "When his mind's made up about something, there's no changing it. It was like that when I wanted to bring my bike to Steve's house."
"Oh, hell..." I sighed. I glanced over and saw my sister playing with a group of 7 year olds near a tub of cheap plastic toys, like the ones they give you at the duck pond at a carnival. "Well at least she's having fun."
Christine was a bit slow.
"She could have fun with sock puppets and an ace bandage." Stan laughed. "Last week I saw her putting plastic wrap on one of her stuffed animals, I asked her what she was doing and she said that its leg was broken and needed to heal. What a bunch of horse crap!"
He must've said this too loudly, because one of the mothers of the countless ankle biters hurried over to the table and touched him gently on the shoulder, "Son," she admonished in a whispery voice, "You might want to watch your language around the little ones, they pick up easily on things like that."
"I only said crap" He replied loudly, "I thought they would have learned already from you guys. You really need to get moving on your parenting skills or else you'll really be behind the Jonses' on this one."
The woman's mouth opened and shut a few times like a fish gasping for air. "You... you..."
Stan stood up, "Relax, relax. I'm sorry about that; I was just trying to make a joke. I'm really sorry and I'll watch what I say around your GAP clad offspring."
"Just watch it!" she hissed through closed teeth and whisked away as quickly as she had materialized.
Stan looked over his shoulder. "OK yuppie lady." He sat back down and addressed me. "Yeah, like I said total horse CRAP!" He looked at me and laughed.
"Stan!" I started.
"What did I do?"
Just then a voice permeated over the din. "He's coming everyone get ready!"
Ready for what? Ready for another mainstream zombie to walk through the door and suggest we all listen to the Dave Matthews Band, and go to bed at a sensible hour? Or to come in and suggest that all of us as a group should watch some vapid family friendly movie that would warm out hearts just in time for the cake to be cut? My mother approached us, "Come on guys, get to the front with us, we're the only family members here." We followed my mother to the front of the crowd to where the rest of our traveling circus was standing with huge grins on their faces.
"He's going to love this."
"I hope he likes the present I got him."
I was getting tired of these comments. "It would be nice if his actual birthday wasn't three weeks away like someone I know."
Grandmother noodle head glared at me. "Why do you always have to bring your negativity along? Everyone's trying to have a nice time and then you go and shit all over it."
I held my tongue. I knew I would hear all about how selfish I was being later on.
The uncle stepped through the doors. A shout went through the room, "Surprise!"
He looked tired and haggard, just getting off a nine hour shift as a Medevac pilot. His face instantly brightened when he saw the huge throng of people. "Wow. This is a surprise. Honey, where did you find the time to pull all of this together?" He gave his wife a quick peck on the cheek. "The whole neighborhood's here. And," He looked over at us and his features immediately drooped a bit and the tone of his voice sounded slightly less enthusiastic. "Your parents, brother, and his family. Great! What's this all about anyway?"
"Welcome to your birthday party!" Someone from the crowd offered.
"My birthday?!" He sounded confused. "That's next month. Oh well, but a party's a party right? Have fun everyone!" The crowd began to break up into smaller groups, talking amongst themselves. I didn't see Stan anywhere, so I wandered over to see what my sister Christine was doing.
She was still engaged in the box of plastic toys. "What's going on Chris?" She turned to face me. "What the hell are you doing?!" Her face was covered in smiley face stickers and stick on earrings. I was guessing that it was a game she was playing with her new friends. Christine had never been quite right, a slow learner you could call it. This was evident by her habits of placing CD's in the microwave, making "delicious" concoctions of grape juice, ice cream and chocolate syrup, or bandaging covering herself in ace bandages, pretending she was a burn victim.
“It’s the new game!” She shrieked in her ear-shattering voice. “These kids are fun to play with! I’m the big bad sticker monster and they run and hide from me and I have to find them and bring them back to the treasure chest, and then they run away again and grandma brings me some pop. I would ask you to play but you would just make fun of the game and say it was stupid.”
A little kid, probably about 7 or 8 appeared out of nowhere and stepped on Chris’s foot. “You can’t get me sticker monster!” The kid took off running and Chris followed, making ungodly growling noises mixed with shreiks and squeals of joy, leaving me alone by the kiddie toys. I sighed, this from a sixteen year old. I poured through the cheap trinkets. Plastic puzzles, rhinestone rings, stickers, parachute men, nothing that I would want, but everything this disposable american dream stood for.
A man of about 35 approached me with a beer in his hand. “You know those are just for the kids, right?”
“I know, I was just looking through them.”
“So what brings you here? How do you know David?” He gestured towards the uncle.
“Oh, it’s just some stupid family thing that I got dragged along on. I kind of feel like a fish out of water really.”
“That’s too bad,“ He took a swig out of his beer. “I live down the street from the family, we’ve been neighbors for about 4 years now. The name’s Mike. ”
“Nice to meet you Mike, I’m Addy.” I had no idea what else to day to this clean shaven dalek, who was clearly two sheets into the wind and rapidly stitching a third.
“So do you want to hook up?”
“What?”
“Do you want to hook up? I know a quiet place we can go to not far from here.”
“Aren’t you married?”
He raised his beer to a woman holding an infant who was watching him like a hawk. “That’s the wife over there with the latest bundle of joy, I’m married, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun on the side.”
I felt a tap on my shoulder, I turned around to see Stan carrying a plate of food. “Hey, I snitched some of those kamikaze things from that table over there, come on.” He proceeded to pull me away by the arm.
“Bye.” I left the adulterous prick to his self and followed Stan into the parking lot.
Stan handed me a bright green shooter. “Here try one of these.”
I pushed it back to him. “Not until we get farther away. Someone will see.”
He pushed it back to me. “Screw ‘em.”
“Stanley and Addy!” It was my mother, shouting at us from the cabin. We ignored her and kept walking. “Stanley and Addy! Where are you going?”
“We’ll be back soon. Just taking a walk.” I called over my shoulder.
“No more than ten minutes! I’ll be timing you! Do you hear me?!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” We walked a little way down the path and into the surrounding woods a bit. I sat down on a rock, popped the shooter open and took a big swig out of it. “Ick, this one tastes like Pine Sol.”
“Drink more, soon you won’t care about the taste.” Stan began to take the bark off of a tree. “How do you know what Pine Sol tastes like anyway?”
“Not literally. It tastes like the smell of it.” I drank the rest and threw the bottle on the ground. “Got any more? Not green this time.”
He threw four little bottles at me. “Here. Happy birthday.”
I stared at the bottles. It was the nicest thing someone had done for me all day, and this from a 14 year old small fry, who didn’t want to be here either. I sighed and poked open another bottle. “Yeah, happy birthday to me.”
The rest of the party was insignificant. There was the typical scene of the middle-management men getting more and more buzzed as the afternoon wore on, with their buzzard-like wives continually asking if they would be okay to drive. The pint sized future doctors and lawyers ran around and screamed like banshees, tapping from their reserve of never-ending energy. Sal’s Civil war gift was briefly looked at, regarded with a shrug, and thrown onto a pile with the other gifts, eventually being mistaken for trash and thrown out.
So, back to the cupcake in a van. It wasn’t really a cupcake, more like one of those hardened cinnamon buns that had sat on the shelf of the gas station two weeks after its expiration date, only to be snatched up in some rich tourist wife's adaptation of a shopping spree on the road. Our traveling party started to sing the appropriate dirge and was stopped in the middle by Christine who was still sporting bits of dried glue on her face. “Look,” she gestured to me. “She’s so happy she’s crying.”
Birthday Blues(Emerald Gowers)
My birthday party was irrelevant, having consisted of having a store bought cupcake with one candle in it shoved in my face whilst traveling in a fully packed minivan with a load of pissed off Italians that called themselves my family. Granted, it was a kind gesture in their eyes, giving the bastard child of a defunct marriage a paltry birthday token.
We were coming from an uncle's party in the middle of suburbia, Maryland. His birthday wasn't for three weeks and the fact that his wife was due to give birth to their second child, bringing them closer to the ideal ratio of 2.3 was somehow more important to the family than my upcoming 'Big one-two'.
Weeks in advance I had asked my step-father, Sal, if I could go to my friend’s vacation cabin with her for my birthday. His response was to pull an envelope with a civil war photograph out of a drawer and explain to me in great detail about how much it had cost him, the great lengths he had gone to get it, and how disappointed this uncle would be if I didn't show up for his premature birthday party. When I argued that it was going to be my actual birthday, I was shot down like a poor duck in that ever popular game, and he was the sly snickering dog laughing at me from behind the bushes. In all essence the answer was a flat out NO. I could have rebelled, but knew better than to test the waters, because as innocuous as this man seemed on the outside, he had a penchant for slapping around women and children who got on his bad side.
His parents who were going to drive the two hundred some odd miles were no better, enforcing ridiculous double standards and contradictions between myself and their "natural" grandchildren. Enough time spent on that matter, just enough to show that I was leading a highly oppressed life with a family that was constantly keeping me at an arm's length.
So I decided to go with the flow, grin and bear it and put my best face forward, insert your cliché here. After telling my friend Mindy that it was a no go, I proceeded to pack for the trip that was surely going to be greater than the day of my birth. We were going to Frederick, Maryland. I don’t' remember much about the ride over except that we had to get up early. My siblings Christine and Stan, being 15 and 14, slept easily while I could barely get a wink in edgewise, between the inane banter of the noodle-heads operating the vehicle, and the extreme right wing news station blaring from the tinny speakers. I watched the mountainous landscape roll by wondering if this was all there was ever going to be in my life, permanently stuck between childhood and adulthood, ruled over by a sadistic tyrant who wanted to micro-control every aspect of my being. A life devoid of joy and discovery, where shame and regret were the main course served cold. I watched the countryside roll by, its houses dark with sleeping inhabitants who surely led normal lives.
Fast forward to our arrival at the surprise party. We were greeted by an aunt at a rented cabin in a state park. Friends of the uncle were milling about enjoying beers and conversation amidst the shrieks and yelps of their little tax deductions. I scanned the room to find that there was nobody even close to my age there. It seemed as if everybody in the room was staring at me, wondering what this strange girl was doing here, obviously out of her age group. I shrugged it off and made my way to a table where my brother was sitting.
"This really blows." I said to him looking at the cracked wood paneled floor. "I can't believe that I didn't try harder to get out of this. I have no idea who any of these people are. There's not anyone even interesting enough to talk to."
Stan nodded. "When his mind's made up about something, there's no changing it. It was like that when I wanted to bring my bike to Steve's house."
"Oh, hell..." I sighed. I glanced over and saw my sister playing with a group of 7 year olds near a tub of cheap plastic toys, like the ones they give you at the duck pond at a carnival. "Well at least she's having fun."
Christine was a bit slow.
"She could have fun with sock puppets and an ace bandage." Stan laughed. "Last week I saw her putting plastic wrap on one of her stuffed animals, I asked her what she was doing and she said that its leg was broken and needed to heal. What a bunch of horse crap!"
He must've said this too loudly, because one of the mothers of the countless ankle biters hurried over to the table and touched him gently on the shoulder, "Son," she admonished in a whispery voice, "You might want to watch your language around the little ones, they pick up easily on things like that."
"I only said crap" He replied loudly, "I thought they would have learned already from you guys. You really need to get moving on your parenting skills or else you'll really be behind the Jonses' on this one."
The woman's mouth opened and shut a few times like a fish gasping for air. "You... you..."
Stan stood up, "Relax, relax. I'm sorry about that; I was just trying to make a joke. I'm really sorry and I'll watch what I say around your GAP clad offspring."
"Just watch it!" she hissed through closed teeth and whisked away as quickly as she had materialized.
Stan looked over his shoulder. "OK yuppie lady." He sat back down and addressed me. "Yeah, like I said total horse CRAP!" He looked at me and laughed.
"Stan!" I started.
"What did I do?"
Just then a voice permeated over the din. "He's coming everyone get ready!"
Ready for what? Ready for another mainstream zombie to walk through the door and suggest we all listen to the Dave Matthews Band, and go to bed at a sensible hour? Or to come in and suggest that all of us as a group should watch some vapid family friendly movie that would warm out hearts just in time for the cake to be cut? My mother approached us, "Come on guys, get to the front with us, we're the only family members here." We followed my mother to the front of the crowd to where the rest of our traveling circus was standing with huge grins on their faces.
"He's going to love this."
"I hope he likes the present I got him."
I was getting tired of these comments. "It would be nice if his actual birthday wasn't three weeks away like someone I know."
Grandmother noodle head glared at me. "Why do you always have to bring your negativity along? Everyone's trying to have a nice time and then you go and shit all over it."
I held my tongue. I knew I would hear all about how selfish I was being later on.
The uncle stepped through the doors. A shout went through the room, "Surprise!"
He looked tired and haggard, just getting off a nine hour shift as a Medevac pilot. His face instantly brightened when he saw the huge throng of people. "Wow. This is a surprise. Honey, where did you find the time to pull all of this together?" He gave his wife a quick peck on the cheek. "The whole neighborhood's here. And," He looked over at us and his features immediately drooped a bit and the tone of his voice sounded slightly less enthusiastic. "Your parents, brother, and his family. Great! What's this all about anyway?"
"Welcome to your birthday party!" Someone from the crowd offered.
"My birthday?!" He sounded confused. "That's next month. Oh well, but a party's a party right? Have fun everyone!" The crowd began to break up into smaller groups, talking amongst themselves. I didn't see Stan anywhere, so I wandered over to see what my sister Christine was doing.
She was still engaged in the box of plastic toys. "What's going on Chris?" She turned to face me. "What the hell are you doing?!" Her face was covered in smiley face stickers and stick on earrings. I was guessing that it was a game she was playing with her new friends. Christine had never been quite right, a slow learner you could call it. This was evident by her habits of placing CD's in the microwave, making "delicious" concoctions of grape juice, ice cream and chocolate syrup, or bandaging covering herself in ace bandages, pretending she was a burn victim.
“It’s the new game!” She shrieked in her ear-shattering voice. “These kids are fun to play with! I’m the big bad sticker monster and they run and hide from me and I have to find them and bring them back to the treasure chest, and then they run away again and grandma brings me some pop. I would ask you to play but you would just make fun of the game and say it was stupid.”
A little kid, probably about 7 or 8 appeared out of nowhere and stepped on Chris’s foot. “You can’t get me sticker monster!” The kid took off running and Chris followed, making ungodly growling noises mixed with shreiks and squeals of joy, leaving me alone by the kiddie toys. I sighed, this from a sixteen year old. I poured through the cheap trinkets. Plastic puzzles, rhinestone rings, stickers, parachute men, nothing that I would want, but everything this disposable american dream stood for.
A man of about 35 approached me with a beer in his hand. “You know those are just for the kids, right?”
“I know, I was just looking through them.”
“So what brings you here? How do you know David?” He gestured towards the uncle.
“Oh, it’s just some stupid family thing that I got dragged along on. I kind of feel like a fish out of water really.”
“That’s too bad,“ He took a swig out of his beer. “I live down the street from the family, we’ve been neighbors for about 4 years now. The name’s Mike. ”
“Nice to meet you Mike, I’m Addy.” I had no idea what else to day to this clean shaven dalek, who was clearly two sheets into the wind and rapidly stitching a third.
“So do you want to hook up?”
“What?”
“Do you want to hook up? I know a quiet place we can go to not far from here.”
“Aren’t you married?”
He raised his beer to a woman holding an infant who was watching him like a hawk. “That’s the wife over there with the latest bundle of joy, I’m married, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun on the side.”
I felt a tap on my shoulder, I turned around to see Stan carrying a plate of food. “Hey, I snitched some of those kamikaze things from that table over there, come on.” He proceeded to pull me away by the arm.
“Bye.” I left the adulterous prick to his self and followed Stan into the parking lot.
Stan handed me a bright green shooter. “Here try one of these.”
I pushed it back to him. “Not until we get farther away. Someone will see.”
He pushed it back to me. “Screw ‘em.”
“Stanley and Addy!” It was my mother, shouting at us from the cabin. We ignored her and kept walking. “Stanley and Addy! Where are you going?”
“We’ll be back soon. Just taking a walk.” I called over my shoulder.
“No more than ten minutes! I’ll be timing you! Do you hear me?!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” We walked a little way down the path and into the surrounding woods a bit. I sat down on a rock, popped the shooter open and took a big swig out of it. “Ick, this one tastes like Pine Sol.”
“Drink more, soon you won’t care about the taste.” Stan began to take the bark off of a tree. “How do you know what Pine Sol tastes like anyway?”
“Not literally. It tastes like the smell of it.” I drank the rest and threw the bottle on the ground. “Got any more? Not green this time.”
He threw four little bottles at me. “Here. Happy birthday.”
I stared at the bottles. It was the nicest thing someone had done for me all day, and this from a 14 year old small fry, who didn’t want to be here either. I sighed and poked open another bottle. “Yeah, happy birthday to me.”
The rest of the party was insignificant. There was the typical scene of the middle-management men getting more and more buzzed as the afternoon wore on, with their buzzard-like wives continually asking if they would be okay to drive. The pint sized future doctors and lawyers ran around and screamed like banshees, tapping from their reserve of never-ending energy. Sal’s Civil war gift was briefly looked at, regarded with a shrug, and thrown onto a pile with the other gifts, eventually being mistaken for trash and thrown out.
So, back to the cupcake in a van. It wasn’t really a cupcake, more like one of those hardened cinnamon buns that had sat on the shelf of the gas station two weeks after its expiration date, only to be snatched up in some rich tourist wife's adaptation of a shopping spree on the road. Our traveling party started to sing the appropriate dirge and was stopped in the middle by Christine who was still sporting bits of dried glue on her face. “Look,” she gestured to me. “She’s so happy she’s crying.”
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