*zzzzzzzz* *zzzzzzzz*
“Ooooooo, Maaaatttthhheeewwww….”
What? Who said that?
“It is I, the Ghost of Birthday Past! Ooooo!”
Do you really have to do that?
“It’s part of the job description, if I want to get paid. Ooooooo!”
What do you want?
“Your birthday was this past week, I’m here to help you reminisce on your blog about past birthdays!”
Huh, that's actually a good idea. There’s so much to tell about my past birthdays. Thank you Ghost of Birthday Past!”
“It’s what I do! Oooooo!”
______________________________________________________________________________
Ok, that bit is done now. I’m one of those guys who loves when their birthday comes around. I’m not one of those “7 more days, 4 hours, 53 minutes, and 36 seconds till my birthday!” kind of guys, but I do get excited as the day gets near.
As of (initially) writing this, it is indeed my birthday: April 21st. Ah, the best day of spring every year. The perfect time to have a birthday. It’s never too hot and never too cold. There are so many ways to spend my birthday in the middle of Spring.
Unfortunately, with the corona virus pandemic currently underway, any previous plans of how to spend my birthday were null and voided. Not that there were any major plans in the first place. There wasn’t anything outside of hanging out with friends and getting dinner with my folks. But whatever my birthday was SUPPOSED to be didn’t happen.
Rather than dwell on what my 19th birthday could have been, I think it’s better for me to remember what my last eighteen birthdays were. So what do you say kids, wanna take a trip to the past and look over what my previous birthdays were like? I’ll take that no as a yes.
I guess the best place to start is my actual birth day. April 21st, 2001. The day when I entered this realm of existence. I have to be honest, I don’t remember much about that day. Apologies, I didn’t think I would be writing this blog nineteen years later. I was just living in the moment back then. Luckily, my parents seem to remember this day very vividly for some reason. So I’m gonna go based on their accounts.
There wasn’t anything abnormal about my birth. I was born at my local hospital sometime in the evening. I came out, gasped my first few breaths of life, said hello to my mother, and pooped all over her. That should have been a sign of the years to come.
There is one detail that my parents still debate about my birth: the meatball sandwich. You know how the mother gives birth and the father is by her side, holding her hand while she goes through the birthing process? That’s what my dad said happened. My mother, on the other hand, seems to recall my father just standing there eating a meatball sub. I’ve never really questioned which one of them was telling the truth (mostly because it was hilarious to watch them argue over it). I kind of just accepted that I came into this world. Doesn’t matter how, it happened regardless of what italian delights were present.
I don’t remember anything from my first few birthday’s either. I was just having too much fun and can’t seem to recall what happened. My parents did show me some pictures from my first birthday though. They sent out these special invitations to everyone and made a big deal out of it. Something for them to remember (not me though, clearly).
My earliest birthday memories were spent in Disney World. Yeah, I was a little spoiled. My mother had a lot of week long business trips to Orlando when I was a kid that just so happened to be around my birthday. So, that was sort of my birthday present that also acted as our family vacation each year. Looking back, it was actually pretty cool going to Disney World for my birthday. I remember celebrating by waking up, eating some Mickey Mouse waffles, then going to one of the parks all day. I was pretty lucky as a child.
But of course I had to have birthday parties for the rest of my family and friends to come and celebrate alongside me. And trust me, my parties were a pretty big deal growing up. My mother always put a week of hard work into making all sorts of stuff for the party: cooking the cake and other dishes, wrapping the presents, and setting up all sorts of games for us kids to play.
Let’s start with the presents. That was always the most exciting part about parties for me growing up. My parents told me that when I went to other kid’s birthday parties, I would just sit by the presents and wait for the birthday boy/girl to open them. “Come on Matthew, let’s play tag!” Nah, I’d rather just sit next to the parents.
I got some pretty great presents growing up. Of course the Disney World trips were wonderful presents in themselves. I always got lots of amazing LEGO’s, toys, video games, and more. I can’t really say what present is my favorite, I have received so many. In recent years, my best present has probably been my Nintendo Switch. That console has brought me hours of enjoyment (even if I still have to share it with my brother).
Next, let’s talk about the cake. My mother is a very creative person and put together a lot of different cakes for me over the years. A lot of my cakes had different themes. There was a bee’s (?) cake, a Thomas the Tank Engine cake, a Mario cake, and just so many for me to count. My favorite cake that she has ever made is this chocolate peanut butter cup cake. It looked something like this:
Oh man, those cakes are worth waiting 365 days for.
Now let's talk about the games. This is what totally made my parties. My birthdays always had these fun games for all us kids to play. They were so much fun, some of my best memories with childhood friends came from playing those games.
A popular game that we liked to play was this treasure hunt. This is how my parents filled up everyone’s gift bags. They gave us a slip of paper that told us about a treasure hunt we had to go on around the house. There was a clue on the slip that gave a hint to where the next clue one, which gave a hint to the next one, until eventually we got to the treasure chest filled with goodies.
We also had this dart game where we blew up all these balloons and put them on a board for us to pop. Each balloon had a number (1 or 2) in it, and there were two chests (numbered 1 and 2 respectively) that stored goodies for us to pick from. You threw a dart, picked up the slip of paper, and picked up something from the chest.
There was a whipped cream contest as well. We had all these pie tins that were filled with whipped cream and had one gumball hidden in there. The first person to chew the gum ball and blow the bubble wins. Of course, this meant smothering the pie’s all over our faces. There was so much cream on our faces, people looked so ridiculous once that game was finished.
There were some other games we played over the course of my birthday’s. We had this thing where we looked for plastic bugs in our backyard once, but that wasn’t that exciting. We had another game one year where you had to move a remote control car through an obstacle course. It took too long though and people got bored quickly with that one. I still appreciate my mom for putting so much effort into those ideas though.
As I got older, we slowly stopped playing games at my birthday parties. It was more about just hanging out with my friends (we still had that delicious cake though). Those games will always be cemented in my mind as some of my best birthday memories.
I’ve spent a lot of recent birthday’s differently though. My 17th birthday I actually spent volunteering for this leadership seminar (which I still won’t go into major detail about yet). It was pretty cool, I liked spending my birthday with friends, making a positive impact on the community.
As for this birthday, it actually wasn’t that bad. Sure I still had a couple online classes and didn’t get to spend it with my friends on campus. It was actually quite relaxing sitting around doing nothing. My parents got me Domino’s for my special birthday dinner (hey, I’m a simple man) and my mother made a peanut butter pie.
And it’s not like people totally forgot about my birthday. A ton of my friends still sent me texts with birthday wishes, from old high school acquaintances to new college friends. I even got a call from one of my friends, where their whole family sang me happy birthday over the phone. It was kinda cool.
So don’t fret about how I spent my birthday. It wasn’t what I expected, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good day. The best parts of life aren’t always planned. Plus like I said in this blog post, I had a lot of good birthday’s in the past so it’s not like there was any pressure on this one being special.
18 was an interesting year for me. I hit a lot of high highs and a lot of low lows. But I would rate it as a pretty good year of my life overall. Because through all the thick and thin, I made a lot of personal growth and discovery of who I am as a person. Here’s to hoping that growth continues through 19.
Until my next birthday (where I will surely be visited by the ghost of birthday past again), stay mattastic!
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