So my 37th birthday has come and gone and for once, that is just fine. Besides me coming to the realization that I am swiftly going bald on top. The events surrounding my day cast it in a rather gray tone. One thing, after another formed a comedy of errors that I don’t want to repeat.
It started the night before my birthday when I went to talk with the new teacher in Education about my writing. She’s close to the same age as me and quite possibly more intelligent (something I haven’t encountered in a long time). She’s kind of cute, little bit pudgy, with a tiny waist and nice curves. So basically the kind of woman I’ve decided I’d like to end up with some day. Talking to her is fun, though my friends tease me endlessly about fraternizing with the enemy, and has become a highlight to my days. I know that nothing can come of it, nor would I or she ever let it become even questionably inappropriate as consequences for us both would be severe, but it’s still fun to have a school boy crush.
Anyway, I go into her office to discuss one of my stories and decide to sit down. To her shock and mine, I completely missed the chair and slammed all 290 pounds of me onto the cement floor, ass first.
“Oh my God!” She said. “Are you okay?”
“Yup, just fine,” I said through the pain of an aching tailbone and ego, awkwardly climbing to my feet. “Happens all the time.”
Needless to say after our conversation ended I crawled home in embarrassment.
I woke up on my birthday with a sore butt and headed off to work. I’m not there five minutes when I get screamed at and threatened by our new Education orderly (basically an inmate janitor) for not giving him preferential treatment by breaking a few long-standing rules. The rest of the morning I got to listen to him talk about me behind my back, which is always great fun.
That evening at mail call I get a book for my birthday…the same one I got the previous year. Then my friend, who shares my birthday, and I were getting ready to cook our birthday pizza, mop-bucket style when we learn that the guy who runs the cooking mechanism (which is against the rules but still our only source of cooking) gets busted by the C.O. and taken to the SHU. So I ate Chicken Ramen noodles for my birthday dinner.
As the week went on, my Mom had a medical scare, my father forgot my birthday, my sister forgot my birthday, and I gained four pounds. Finally, a week exactly from my birthday I get a book that I’ve been wanting to read all year long. Excited, I rush back to my room, open it up to the first page and see…it’s all in French! I started to laugh – loudly – until my cellmate, asked if I was okay. I just shook my head and went to dinner.
Since then my Mom has corrected all of those mistakes and my sister sent me a nice card, so everything worked out. It just was definitely a birthday to remember.
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