Dia De Natal

I had my birthday recently. It was not something I was looking forward to. I stopped enjoying birthdays once I finished college. I don't know exactly what about that triggered a change in my attitude, but it would seem that exiting academia and entering the 'real world' led to a greater appreciation for aging and my mortality. Some time ago, my anxiety stemming from the matter came to the fore during what remains one of the best improv scenes I've had. A man is worried about losing his significant other on account of his aging, but she allays his fears in the aftermath of his latest birthday party. It was a musical scene, and the song was 'Happy Birthday To Our Love'.

The party is the only thing that makes the occasion tolerable. This year, I was feeling a bit down as I had not planned a party for myself. Every birthday party of mine had either been planned by myself or my parents, who had not done so since some time during grade school. This time around, I kept thinking of putting together a party, getting stuck on logistics and postponing it. The same thing happened last year, but I finally slapped something together at the last minute and felt grateful that nearly everyone came. It was fun, although looking at pictures from that night I can't see any evidence of it on my face.

A friend who lives in my building suggested that we might watch a movie down at his place. An alternate possibility was going out to a bar. He and I had been out doing something, and he was going to get in touch with me later that evening . One of my roommates and I went down there at the appointed time, and I started walking through the kitchen. We were going to head out to that bar in a moment, but often some 'pre-drinking' transpires. I guess that's what I thought was going to happen. You can guess what happened then. All my friends startled me by springing from hiding places around the living room and shouting surprise.

I was quite stunned and didn't really know how to react. I made a couple of offhand remarks about being sorry that the pretense for getting down there wasn't genuine and being thankful that they chose to mark my latest birthday by shortening my life with such alarm. In truth I was incredibly gratified that anyone cared enough to do what they did. As I said it never had happened before, and I always thought it was something that happened to other people or to characters on television. I guess that now I am other people or a character on television. It feels awfully good.