Birthday Mortification, 1981

Kelly is the prettiest girl in your fourth grade class. You can’t get up the nerve to talk to her, but maybe if you invited her to your birthday things would improve. You’d start talking at lunchtime, and then holding hands on the playground, and eventually you’d marry and have five kids, one of whom would wear a vest and a pocket watch and be named Rothchild.

You arrange it through your mom, and she’s the only girl invited. Hint, hint. And the boys in your class come over, and at her arrival they give you a WTF look before WTF was even a thing. Many of them still think girls are gross. But the few who know better are already jockeying for her attention. What? She was supposed to be charmed by you!

Then everyone goes out to the trampoline. And the jumping happens as God intended – without a giant safety net, and without a fun-sucking one-at-a-time rule, and without bicycle helmets, or anti-gravity boots, or children rolled in bubble wrap. And it’s a hit.

Then it’s movie time, because your family is one of the earliest families to own a VCR, and it makes your house into a movie theater! Can you believe that shit?! And everyone is excited, and popcorn is involved. And your mom has rented two movies: Popeye and The Apple Dumpling Gang. And she puts it up to a vote. Wait, what? A vote? It’s *your* birthday!

And you alone vote for Popeye, because it’s got Mork from Ork in it, so it must be good. And your buddy Kenneth sees this and changes his vote to Popeye out of solidarity. Because friendship, motherfuckers.

But nobody else does. And what the shit Mom? You’d rather blow a magician than sit through The Apple Dumpling Gang. But they’re our guests, Michael. And though you are far too well-mannered to say it, this is the earliest instance of you thinking “This is bullshit!”

And then cake happens. And you hear a hushed conversation between your mom and your aunt about Kelly’s presence, and how you insisted, and so she called her mother, and blah blah. Except your mom has never had a hushed conversation in her life that was actually hushed. And your aunt teases you that you have good taste. And you stupidly say “what?” so she repeats it: “You have good taste. She’s really cute.”

Oh my God! Did Kelly hear that?! You turn scarlet. And in your flight or fight response, your brain disengages. And you jerk your thumb toward Kelly, and scrunch up your face like a constipated gnome, and say “what, her?!” with disgust.

Because smoooooooooth.

And if Kelly didn’t hear what preceded it, she certainly heard that. And there’s no possible recovery from this. And your villainous classmate Stephen is already whispering to her about it. And your buddy Heath is raising his eyebrows at you in that subtle, you’re-making-a-dipshit-of-yourself way that he has.

Then the party wraps up. And your cousin Justin wants to know who that girl was. And you don’t want to talk about it. And nothing changes at school the next week, or ever after.

And somewhere, Rothchild weeps at his fated non-existence.

Birthday Mortification, 2000

You’re a second year associate at Bracewell & Patterson LLP. For birthdays, the secretaries typically get a cake, and send an email invitation to everybody on the floor to come eat it at their desk at such-and-such a time that afternoon. And between thirty and forty people usually show up because: free cake. And there’s awkward small talk, and maybe a few bad jokes. “Jeff, if you’d just bill some more hours we could get you a nicer cake! Haw haw haw!”

However, you share a secretary, Ginny, with a partner who has for the last eighteen years inexplicably forbidden her from getting him a cake or otherwise celebrating his birthday in any way. So she’s not really had much practice at doing it. Plus, she’s a single mom who is all business during the day. She hasn’t really done much hanging out at the other birthday celebrations, preferring instead to crank through her work so she can make the bus home to her boy. So even though she’s about to goof up your birthday, you forgive her before it even happens. Because her heart is giant.

Ginny missed your birthday last year, because you didn’t tell her when it was. But she wants to do it right this year.

She does not do it right.

She knows some of your close friends at the firm. She has also observed you working with certain other attorneys who she incorrectly assumes are your friends. Instead of inviting the whole floor, as everyone else does, she sends specific invitations to a list of people she compiles herself. But Tom is at an arbitration hearing. Derek is in court arguing a motion for summary judgment. Scott is closing a deal. Jeff is taking a deposition. And so on.

At the designated time for cake, you are summoned from your office by Andrew from the corporate section. You do not like Andrew from the corporate section. He’s presumptuous and oafish, and he dips Copenhagen constantly, and he hails from one of those towns deep in East Texas that you try to pretend don’t exist. But he’s been in your office several times over the past week because he has lots of questions and he heard you’re smart.

You step out to your secretary’s desk, cringing at the thought that forty people are about to make a fuss over you.

Instead, you find only three.

Your buddy Richard made it. And Jessica. And a senior associate named Coy, who is cool but whom you don’t know well. And there’s Andrew. And that’s it.

You don’t yet know about the atypical way in which Ginny sent the invitations, or that the whole floor was not invited. All you’re aware of right now is that apparently nobody wanted to come to your birthday.

It’s so awkward that the few guests can barely summon words. “Uh, happy birthday man,” says Richard, with a bit of a nervous chuckle. Jessica leans toward you and whispers “what is going on?!” You have no answers. Maybe your co-workers just don’t like you.

Uncomfortable, Coy wishes you a happy birthday and excuses himself. Because, um, he has a thing.

There’s an entire cake here.

Andrew slaps you on the back. “Well Hamilton, I’d love to stand around here with you and . . . all your friends.” He pauses to look around at an imaginary crowd for dramatic effect. “But I got stuff to do. So, happy birthday and shit.”

Then there are two. They’re your close friends, so you can be honest with them. And you tell them with resignation that you’re going back into your office now, and you don’t want to hear anything else about your birthday.

Ginny wants to know what to do with the cake. You don’t care what she does with the cake.

She leaves it on the raised area in front of her desk. For what remains of the day, you hear lawyers walking past your closed door stopping to say “Oh, cake! What’s the occasion?”

And you shudder. And now you understand why the partner with whom you share a secretary forbids her from getting him a cake.

Birthday Mortification, 2012

It’s your fortieth birthday, and your wife is planning a surprise. Not a real surprise, in which you have no clue. But a partially disclosed surprise, in which you know she’s doing something but you don’t know what. And it’s in Houston. And oh God, you hope she didn’t invite a bunch of people who don’t come. Or fail to invite people who you’d want to come. Or invite people you don’t want to come, like Andrew from East Texas. And you are totally in the dark and have zero control over this situation. And control is a big thing for you. A massively big thing. And you’re not handling this well. And damnit, it’s your birthday – why must you be subjected to this? What mortifications are in store?

Unbeknownst to you though, the mortification has already happened.

Your wife uses an Apple service to compile and print bound photo albums. And for your birthday, in addition to a kind of yearbook for your life, she was also trying to compile and print a bound book of some of your writing. But she needed help from some of your buddies to send her some of their favorite samples of your writing. Emails probably, but also story drafts you’ve shared, or copies of the Caption Game you play with your nerd friends, or unique stuff like the prank “Free Banjo Lessons” flier you and your buddy Richard prepared with a fellow lawyer’s picture and real phone number and then plastered all over downtown Houston.

And she started a year ago soliciting your friends to send her the material. But nobody sent her anything. And she nagged them. And cajoled. And begged. And bullied. And eventually, of the twenty-five people to whom she reached out, five replied. And she got a few things – enough to fill a pamphlet. And of the favorites they shared, there *is* some good stuff in there. Like your 2006 email complaint to your buddy Tom when he failed to alert you that a Starbucks frozen green tea latte with blackberry sauce was a thing:

“I am deeply shaken and greatly vexed . . . I cannot tell you how disappointed I am in you and your failure to immediately notify your closest and oldest friends of its existence. The minute I learned of a green tea latte, I fired off an email. In a similar vein, I have is the past instantly alerted you the moment I learned that McRib is back. Contrast this selfless behavior on my part, which clearly places an emphasis on and seeks to protect and advance the interest of my friends, with your own ambivalence towards me and Denis, and your relative lack of concern for what could be a yearning desire on our part to enjoy a tasty beverage comprised of green tea and blackberries, but which has heretofore been coupled with the despondent and misguided belief that such an impossible dream of a refreshment option was not available for purchase or consumption by the general public. What other secret pleasures have you failed to disclose, choosing instead to horde them to yourself as you sip a decadent frozen blackberry green tea and laugh at our ignorance?”

Or the document your buddy Denis shared, which is not a copy of your writing at all, but a handwritten note he scribbled in his day planner to remind him to be mad at you: “5/22/04. Mike: I’d rather eat this turkey bacon than chocolate cake.” It’s a quote of yours, referring to a bacon fiasco in which you found some amazing turkey bacon – turkey bacon that actually tastes like regular bacon. And you told everyone about it, in your typical dramatic fashion. Because holy shit, good turkey bacon! And Kelly tried to buy it for Denis, but couldn’t find it in the store where you bought it. And Eyvette tried to buy it for Tom, but she couldn’t either. Really? So you went to the store, and you found it. And it was right there, next to the turkey bacon section. Wait. Oh shit. It was just regular bacon.

But the book is tiny, and maybe pathetic, and not what Erin envisioned at all.

In the car on the way to Houston, you fuss vaguely the whole five-hours. And she takes you to your first stop and drops you at some male grooming joint. And you lose your shit because what the fuck is this place? And you are given a shave and a manicure and a pedicure. And you want none of this, damnit. But you’re supposed to be open to new experiences or whatever. So your grit your teeth and bear it, all the while tense about what else is in store for you.

And then she picks you up and takes you to a dinner with buddies and family. And she had it catered by one of your favorite sushi joints. And she decorated with memories from your past, and put all kinds of thought into the details. And it’s really special.

Everyone there wants to see the book of your writing that she’s been compiling. And she acts like she forgot to bring it. But the truth is that she didn’t want to embarrass you or them by presenting the tiny collection. And it’s a kindness.

And you have a better time than you expected to have. And even though she forgot to invite some important people, you’re so grateful that she arranged it. And you have some growing up to do with respect to this whole control thing. Or fear. Or whatever it was that made you act like a dick about your wife’s efforts in your honor.

And when she eventually gives you the book she compiled, back home in Fort Worth, you are genuinely touched by the things she and five friends wrote about you.

And even though things didn’t go perfectly, the real takeaway is that you are loved. And you know it. And that’s as good a birthday as anyone can ask for.