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Every person has a super skill. David’s is being able to walk directly to any item in any Wal-Mart in the country. Usually he is making a Geiger counter noise and therefore people think it is his “special” skill. Remembering birthdays is not one of my super skills. My grandmother used to say that the road to “you know where” is paved with good intentions. If this is the case, I have paved myself a four-lane super highway. I just recently found out that I have been sending my stepmother flowers on the wrong day for the last 30 years. She said it was so sweet I remembered her that she didn’t have the heart to tell me I missed the actual day. I sent my niece, who was 17 this year, a birthday card announcing “Happy 1st Birthday” because it was the first year I remembered her birthday on the right day. I actually completely forgot David’s birthday one year and then had to institute the “Week Long Celebration of Dave” for the next few years to soothe his hurt feelings. The worst though is poor Jess. Her birthday is March the 1st. I really didn’t understand what “tax season” was when I decided to birth a child in March. I have spent 22 years in a panic on the last day of February making sure Jess had the requisite cake and gifts the next day. In an effort to save her birthday celebration, Jess started announcing the number of days until her birthday in the hopes that I would get the subtle reminder.
Because of our new book Cookies for Dinner I was forced to log onto Facebook and enter into the 21st century and the arena of social networking. The wonderful unintended consequence of this is that there is a little birthday box that pops up as a reminder that it is someone’s birthday. Late one night I logged onto Facebook and up popped the little birthday box announcing it was Kenny’s birthday. Kenny is Christi’s boyfriend. Looking down at the corner of my computer screen I realized it was 12:04am. If I hurried I might be the first person to wish Kenny a Happy Birthday. I would still have to go to the Publix in the morning and get a variety of ice cream sprinkles (Kenny’s favorite) and put them in the mail. I felt like a great girlfriend’s mother until my cellphone rang. It was Christi. It was NOT Kenny’s birthday. He just uses this as a way to weed out his real friends from the clutter of people who end up on his Facebook page. So now, not only do I still stink at birthdays but my daughter’s boyfriend is going to be the first person on Facebook to “unfriend” me.
