Preparing for the Really Big Show
Let’s talk about birthdays. Birthdays are the only annual event in your life that seem to happen twice a year after you are forty. Sun day was my birthday…again. It doesn’t seem possible that a whole year has passed since the last batch of clever cards and the question, “How old are you today?” Boy. I hate that question. The only time I can remember being proud to answer this question, was when I finally turned 21, after being a child for what seemed like (at the time) 35 years.
When you get to a certain stage in your life, all the normal people that you have known through your 20’s and 30’s suddenly turn into comedians on your birthday. Your 40th birthday is usually one of the giggles for these comedians. There are times they are so happy about this big event, they feel obligated to buy an ad in the local newspaper. So, when the big announcement is made, everyone in the town where you live can be as tickled as they are. This ALMOST happened to me. The brunette “Joan Rivers” among my friends decided that everyone in Longmont should know when I turned 40, so she ordered an ad in the Times- Call, announcing the big event. The only problem was, it was not my 40th birthday. It was my 39th. Well, let me tell you, she must have used some kind of charm to get the ad department of the Times-Call to cancel that particular piece of reading material. She did succeed in getting it canceled (lucky for her.)
One of the funniest birthday stories I think I have ever heard happened to a lady in Kansas. She said everyone was gathered around her birthday cake with the candles burning, singing happy birthday. when an elderly black gentleman in a yellow slicker and a fireman’s hat, walked in the door with a fire extinguisher in his hands. He slowly shuffled across the floor to the table with the cake on it, and proceeded to extinguish her whole birthday cake. Seems when some wise guy made the old dumb statement, “Hey somebody call the fire department!,” somebody did.
On one of Paul’s recent birthdays, (I’m forbidden to tell you which one. but I can tell you it was one of the giggles) all his friends in Kansas and Wyoming called him collect, to wish him a happy birthday. As a matter of fact, it turned out that they gave him the most expensive gift he got that year…the telephone bill.
Being in your forties is no big deal, you get a few clever cards and some nice cards and gifts. All your friends use these years between forty and fifty rehearsing for the really big show when you turn the big 5-0. This is the year that drug stories turn a profit. All the “Buddy Hacketts” and “Phylis Dillers” rush to the drug store to buy out all the vitamin E tablets. Fat Fanny support hose and cards with such sentimental verses as: “What the hecks one more year..at your age you’re lucky to be playing with a full deck.”
I have a few more years before all this good stuff will be directed at me, but I am positive they all have me on their schedule. So in the meantime, my birthday will be as nice as this year. There was only one strange happening this year. In the mail Friday was a card from Ron and Judy in Hawaii, wishing Paul a happy birthday instead of me. Do you think they are holding a dress rehearsal for their really big show in a few years?
