The birthday girl

I have been thinking about my birthday. It's not today, or even soon, and when it does come, it won't be a significant number. But last year's was spectacularly bad, worse even than the ones when I got a disfiguring mystery rash all over or got 2 weeks of food poisoning from the curried chicken sandwiches at a posh birthday tea, and I am searching feverishly for a way to disaster-proof the next one.

It's not like I have high standards. I keep the date quiet, and celebrate that way too. My sole wish is to spend part of it with my mother, who had all the work to do when I arrived. She's the one who gave me my fussiest birthdays (though the time my friend Bob woke me early to sing Happy Birthday the year it fell on a Saturday, and turned out to be calling from the lobby of my apartment building with a chocolate cake in his free hand, was pretty fabulous.)

Mum used to throw the best of all local birthday parties for me by renting the library's projector, plus some National Film Board shorts. We always, always had I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly. Afterward, and after the usual rounds of Pin The Tail On The Donkey, my guests and I would retire to the dining room for cake with fortunes and coins in it, and one particular guest would laugh so hard a milk/cake combo would come out his nose. Now that's a party. Maybe I should learn to send cake and milk out my own nose?