birthday girls

Today is my sister’s 25th birthday. Allow me to correct myself: today is my sisters’ 25th birthday. Oddly enough, my brother married a woman who was born on the same day of the same year as my sister. I envy their birthday. This is the time of year when I think of all these things I want. My birthday is two months after the Christmas hullaballoo winds down, so usually I just ask for whatever I didn’t get. Now, the ideas are fresh.

Anyway, having a birthday as an unspoiled Pelesky kid truely was something to look forward to all year. Mom would take the birthday kid to Top Foods where we could pick out whatever we wanted to eat for the day. Not just breakfast: also lunch. Not just breakfast and lunch: also dinner. And dessert. I would be sure to consume a week’s worth of calories in a day anytime a birthday rolled around. I always ordered the same foods:

Breakfast: Honey Bunches of Oats, chocolate milk, chocolate donnettes.
Lunch: Cheetos, string cheese, sandwiches, Swiss cake rolls
Dinner: Stroganoff, green beans, garlic bread
Dessert: chocolate cake and ice cream

And on our plate, for each of those meals, mom would place the “You’re Special” bear. It sounds stupid, but that stupid bear really did make the day more special.

Mom would make us save all our birthday cards until our actual birthday: taunting us with them propped on the mantel. Finally, after birthday dinner, envelopes were torn open, wrapping paper strewn across the carpet until all our treasures had been unwrapped (and hopefully none of them would be ugly clothes of more Avon roll-a-soaps). And then I had over nine months until I was the recipient of gifts again.

This is exactly why today is the perfect birthday. Because you never have to wait too long to see your name on a gift tag. And because summer is a time to want, while winter is a time to hibernate. All this to say, “happy birthday, sisters.” Even though as adults, we don’t get as many gifts and most of our Birthday wishes come in the form of Facebook comments rather than cards with money. Hopefully your man spoils you rotten. Because once we’re out of our parents’ house, we have to guilt rely on them to be the birthday coordinators. If only everyone thought as much of our birthdays as we do.

P.S. I find it ironic that I corrected myself in this first paragraph, because earlier at work I said that I don’t bother correcting people’s English, “because I’ve come to realize over half the people on earth are imbeciles.”