Simba is so cool. After ignoring me all night, he calmly walks into the room and asks, “why are you crying, and wtf is a birthday? I was taken from a big warm dog with milk, stuffed into a cardboard box strapped shut with barbed wire, attached to the back of your bike, et voilà, here we are. I guess that’s a mom. And dad? I don’t even understand what a dad would be.”
“Well Simba,” I start, “Memories don’t live like people do. Or dogs. Why am I crying? It’s a strange story. Maybe all the weed has destroyed my memory or maybe all of that schooling filled my head with too much useless information to remember things like birthdays; but, I only remember 3 of the 33 that I’ve had in this lifetime. Most likely, my low retention rate of birthday memories is due to what humans call a trauma response, forgetting things that hurt to much to remember.”
“So you remember the three that didn’t make you cry?” Simba asks. So cute, I scratch his butt.
“No actually, I remember crying in all three. I remember when I first went to college. I had been on campus for a little over a month and didn’t feel comfortable telling people that it was my birthday, cried about that. I put my favorite red Bucky badger t-shirt on and walked over to, what appeared to be, a homeless man not far from my dorm room. I gave him some cash to buy me some Everclear.”
– Biggie
“Eh!” Even Simba knows that Everclear is nasty. If I learned anything from Uni High it was to have a great distrust of authority figures (thanks Yuri, Doug, Bill, rapist abusive mother fuckers) …and that the higher proof the alcohol, the less you need to drink to get smashed. Nothing else really stuck from Uni (shaaaaade and lies). Actually… University of Laboratory High School is dramatically sticky…academically and socially over ten years later I’m still in therapy).
“Sooooo I got smashed then walked to the street full of frat houses. Not long into my walk I saw Heather, a blossoming friend who lived in the dorm room across from me. I don’t remember if I told her that it was my birthday, but I do remember finding a series of rowdy frat parties and drinking until everything went black. I had officially revolved around the sun 17 times.”
“Weird,” Simba retorts and goes to sleep. I, being crazy, keep talking to my dog friend.
“I more vividly remember the anniversary of my 16th revolution. I was wearing a brown shirt that said ‘spicy’ and some blue jeans while watching Sweet 16. I was at home, alone, and definitely crying about it. I took the camera that I had proudly bought with money from my news paper route, propped it on top of the tv, put the timer on, and snapped my senior photo for the yearbook. Mom had cancelled the appointment she had made to have professional photos taken of me holding a basketball for my senior photo. Per my request. I could not stand the idea of her spending money on a picture of me that I could take for free. And I hate people taking pictures of me.”
Simba doesn’t flinch, so I wrap up my story. “The first birthday I remember was so weird. Everything was blurry and cold. I couldn’t help but scream and cry. All I felt was wetness and confusion. Feelings were new, eyes were new. I remember white walls, but not knowing walls, I remember hands on me, not knowing hands or me, and I remember another crying person in the room who I wanted to be near but couldn’t. I remember needing and not knowing needing. And I remember solitude. Terror turned to comfort as my thumb found my mouth, while I laid in the hospital bed alone. Not knowing anything else in the waking world. My stomach was aching, hunger. For the first time, it came to me. And has never left. And that’s all I remember of the born day, birthday numero uno.”
Simba jumps up to leave.
“Seriously bro,” I sigh, “lay down!” I have been waiting to chill with him all day and after I got home, all evening he hid from me, we finally have time to cuddle and now he wants to leave after a 2 minute story! He starts running away faster. I push him back to his pillow and he yelps like I’m murdering him. “Great, now my roommates will think I’m abusing you, lay the fuck down simba!” I yell. He jumps on the bed next to me, lays down, and starts shaking profusely. Great, not even my dog likes me. The crying lady should have had an abortion. Imagine all of the tears she would have prevented. In searching though my fetus memories, I think that my birth mother tried to abort me and it didn’t work, then some aliens came, did some weird shit, ameliorated the fetus, and that is how I was born, Frankenalien Al.
Now that I think about it, I definitely remember going to a pool last year, jumping out of a plane when I turned 30, and having a clown with some kids from my class over (who definitely did not like me) in my younger years…so I guess I remember 6 birthdays but 3 is a much sexier number). Shout out to all the folks who’ve loved me through the challenging days, and to Mom for loving and sharing with me for all except 1!
ALways ONE never ALONE 