After previously mentioning how I was completely “over” the whole BIRTHDAY PARTY AT A BAR idea, I have decided after much deliberation to go ahead and…

Have a birthday party at a bar.

My actual birthday isn’t until Sunday and I originally was just going to have my family go to brunch, etc. I figured most people were busy, didn’t want to haul ass to a crowded bar, probably had better things to do, etc. But then, wait. Some people like me, don’t they!? And the more I thought about it, by NOT having an open birthday party celebration, I was depriving those people of celebrating with me. I realize this sounds egotistical but it’s sort of true, right? I mean, I might be perfectly fine celebrating with my nearest and dearest but…what about the people who I see a few times of year who LOOK FORWARD to getting drunk at a bar with me? Who ALREADY E-MAILED ME weeks before my birthday telling me how excited they were to see me?

WHAT? HOW COULD I LET THOSE PEOPLE DOWN!? And more importantly, why was I being such a snobby bitch!?

So, tonight, we shall gather. I reserved the back room at a martini bar where, incidentally, I celebrated by 23rd birthday. (THREE YEARS AGO. OH MY GOD. HOW DID I GET SO OLD?!) I told the hostess over the phone that there would probably be between seven to ten people showing up.

And then the e-mails started flowing…

“YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHO IS IN TOWN!!! WE ARE TOTALLY COMING TO YOUR BIRTHDAY!”

“IS IT OKAY IF I BRING FOUR PEOPLE WHO WENT TO UNDERGRAD WITH US? WE ARE ALL SO EXCITED!”

What?

The number has increased steadily to the point where I have no idea who on earth is showing up. I specifically asked people not to RSVP, to just show up if they felt like it, etc. And yet, thanks to a slew of e-mails disregarding that advice, I can’t help but calculate that the final number will fall somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five.

WHAT?

WHO AM I?

Having all these FRIENDS and shit?!

So, in honor of the fact that I am having a kick ass party tonight (seriously, I’m wearing a new hot pink dress and Alayna made cupcakes!), I thought I would give you a little Flashback Friday BIRTHDAY action. Enjoy!! And if you know me and you live in NYC, come to my party because I am famous. KTHX.

1991

I am 8 years old. My mother has made me a bunny cake, just like she does every year. She uses two circle pans: a whole one for the bunny’s face and she cuts the other into ears and part of his neck. I know this because I watch her do it and when she’s done with the mixer, she lets me lick the beaters.

She decorates the bunny with candy—strips of Twizzler’s for his bow-tie, m&m’s for his eyes. My mom is the best baker in the whole world and she lets me stand on a stool next to her and help her. My little brother plays with pots and pans on the kitchen floor because he is a baby. I am not and that is why I get to help make the cake.

Later on, around the kitchen table, my mom turns off the light switch as my father strikes a match to a set of candles.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR LAURA,” my siblings scream at the top of their lungs. I love that everyone is singing to me and that I will have presents to open and that my mom made this bunny cake for me.  It’s so perfect, I almost don’t want to eat it. My mom beams at me and tells me to smile for the camera. As I do, I think that she is the prettiest lady I know, the prettiest lady who made a cake just for me.

1994

I have spent the past six months begging my parents for a Gameboy. With the exception of computer games, video games are banned in our house which means the only time I get to do ANYTHING FUN is when I go to my cousin’s house and spend hours and hours holed up in front of the television playing Duck Hunt, Mario Brothers and Wheel of Fortune.

“THE GAMEBOY IS A PERFECT COMPROMISE!” I tell my parents.

“It’s too expensive,” they say.

“I WILL PAY HALF! With my Communion money!”

“We’ll think about it,” they say.

“PUH-LEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE!” I beg.

The day of my birthday is chilly, as always and I can hardly contain my excitement when my mother hands me a square box that can only mean one thing: MY DREAMS HAVE COME TRUE.

I jump up and down and scream my head off and then eagerly insert TETRIS into the back of the Gameboy after ripping off the packaging and inserting four double A batteries.

“THIS IS THE BEST BIRTHDAY OF MY LIFE,” I declare.

The Gameboy will become my very best companion, hanging out with me in the backseat of our mini van during trips to grandma’s house, family vacations, any other long car ride. For Christmas, I will get two more games plus a light that attaches to the top so I can see the screen in the dark. I have never gotten a birthday gift that is so expensive and so trendy. It makes up for all the hand-me-down clothes I wear, the crooked bangs my mom cuts on my forehead and the fact that when I walk around school, I sometimes fall down as I have no spatial awareness.

The one drawback I didn’t see coming?

Fighting over the Gameboy with my mother.

“IT’S MY TURN. I FINISHED MY HOMEWORK.”

She raises a hand off the couch to shoo me away.

“Stop it, Laura. Get ready for bed. I’m playing Tetris.”

“YOU ARE AN ADDICT.”

“I warned you,” said my father. “When we were dating, she was completely addicted to Frogger. You’re going to have a hard time prying that thing out of her hands.”

“BUT IT’S MINE!” I whine.

“BUT I BOUGHT IT FOR YOU. GET READY FOR BED.”

And so I learn, even in 4th grade, that nothing in this family is ever truly mine.

1997

“I don’t know, Laura,” my mother says. “Your birthday falls on Good Friday this year and it really is a time of fasting. Do I really need to make you a birthday cake?”

I shrug because I don’t want to be wrong. And I don’t want to tell her how important it is to me. I feel like I should be old enough to not care about something as silly as a birthday cake. But I do.

In the end, she makes one, just the way I like it. Despite being in eighth grade, it is still shaped like a bunny. Vanilla cake with vanilla Funfetti frosting. We don’t eat any meat all day but we dig into the cake. As the sugary icing melts on my tongue, I can’t help but think that Jesus will forgive us for this, a birthday bunny cake on Good Friday.

1999

Everyone my age is having a Sweet Sixteen. I have already been to a handful since Christmas. They are elaborate, expensive parties, thrown at wedding halls, catered, DJ’ed, girls in flowing dresses dancing all night.

“We just can’t afford it,” my mother tells me.

I nod my head because, story of my life. But I also feel deep down that I don’t really want a party. I’m almost sixteen and I feel really awkward. I have just begun dating my very first boyfriend. We haven’t kissed yet. I don’t know how. I don’t really have many friends except the girls from church and the people from drama club. Who would come to my Sweet Sixteen anyway?

My mother and I agree to just have a simple night with dinner and cake with my family. I don’t even remember asking for any specific gifts. I seem to feel apathetic about the whole thing. Birthdays. Ugh. So much pressure to have a perfect day.

Unbeknownst to me, my mother has called all of my friends and invited them over for cake. It will be a surprise, a compromise on the whole “Sweet Sixteen” thing, a way for me to have my friends over and for my parents not to have to take out a second mortgage on the house in order to throw a party. However, somehow, the “surprise” part of it doesn’t make it to the ears of C., one of my closest friends, who walks up to my locker the day of my birthday and asks with a bright smile, “WHAT TIME IS EVERYONE GETTING TO YOUR HOUSE TONIGHT?!”

I blink a few times and then ask her, “For what?!”

It was a small gathering around my dining room table with a lot of laughter. Despite the fact that C. ruined the surprise, I was in a jovial mood, happy to be surrounded by people who liked me enough to come to my house on a school night. And of course, there was a vanilla bunny cake.

Right before he leaves, my boyfriend bends down and kisses me on the mouth in my kitchen. Discounting an unbelievably awkward stage smooch in the high school production of “Grease”, it is my very first kiss. It’s quick and it’s soft and after he’s gone, I think about how nice it was and how unexpected, proving that my birthday, despite losing its element of surprise, could still hold sweetness and wonder and magic.