My 29th Birthday: Part 1, RSVPs, Phonebook, Cigarettes, Disappointment, and a Surprise

 

 

29. I turned 29 yesterday.

 

When I was in 5^th grade I invited every girl in my grade to my birthday party.  I hand wrote invitations and my mom drove me all around town to stick the cards in each girl’s mailbox.  Back then RSVP’ing was practically legally binding, and everyone did it.  Guess how many RSVPs I got back???  0.   ZERO.  Nada.  NONE.

Still, I held out hope that some of the girls would come. 

My mom said if I had gotten back any RSVPs she’d stay and help me throw a party.  But since no one was coming, she was headed off to a motorcycle rally with my dad.  This was their yearly get-away for just the two of them, they’d been attending this for years. 

Sometimes it fell directly on my birthday, sometimes my birthday was their recovery day.

Either way, I felt screwed.

Just to be sure I covered all my bases- I got out the big heavy black and yellow phone book, looked up the phone numbers of each girl, and called them myself.

Dial tone… The beep of each number being pressed.. The ringing… Oh the anxiety.. Then the “Hello?”

I got the same answer each time.  They were sorry, but they couldn’t attend.  Some even felt like they needed to let me know it was 4^th of July weekend, so they would be spending it with their family.

Bastards. 

I wanted to spend the day with my family.  Or their family, I didn’t really care.  I just hated being alone.

When party day came my parents were out of town. I have no idea where my older brothers were, but they weren’t home.  I’m guessing with friends.

 I cleaned up the house, tried to gather snacks from the cupboards, and penned birthday signs out of notebook paper and taped them to the door.  I did all I could to make it seem like a real PARTY.

Two girls showed up, hours after the official party time had ended, and not even because they knew it was my birthday.  They were at my house for a total of about 15 minutes.   The first girl was a classmate who came because she was out wandering the town on her own (uninvolved parents?), and the second was the little neighbor girl who just came over to play.  The first girl tried teaching us how to roll our own cigarettes, which was pencil shavings and that same notebook paper that I had made into my birthday sign.

I still get flashbacks to that day when I use our electric pencil sharpener.

Although the skill seemed interesting, I knew it was wrong, wrong, wrong.  I knew my parents would beat my butt (really, and it was legal back then) if they found out, so I kicked her out.  She said I was stuck up, and she never liked me after that. 

You know what though?  Now at 29, looking back, she never liked me before that, so I suppose it’s no biggie.  Ugh, why did I waste tears on that?

I’m pretty sure she’s still rolling her own cigs today, although from what I know (thanks Facebook) she’s upgraded from pencil shavings to the hard stuff.  Poor girl.  I really do wish I could’ve helped her.

The point is, even though that “party” sucked, I tried my best using what my 10 year old self had available.  That’s important in all areas of life.  Parties are not excluded.  They don’t need to be big and fancy; they just need to be real.

 

I did get one surprise that birthday...  I actually still have it.  Stay tuned, I’ll take a picture and share it with you in my next blog post.