Now birthdays don't really excite me. If I was on my own, I would probably miss my birthday. Birthdays don't get me bent out of shape for various reasons. I have no angst about growing old or oncoming poorer quality of life. My Mom died at age 59. I was worried if I would outlive her. Now I see how young she was when she died. I don't want to outlive my Dad who died at age 95.
Now I realize that most other people are quite concerned about their birthday. It's a big deal! I only forgot my wife's birthday once! But I think it was ingrained on my mind from school as to how important birthdays were. We read the birthdays over the intercom each day. Once in a while some little kid's birthday was missed so I had a very sad and worried little kid coming and telling me that their birthday was missed. They knew that I would go to the office and make sure that the error was corrected. I also said happy birthday to the kid each time I saw him or her that day. I'll never forget the look in those eyes when their birthday was forgotten. It was like they'd received a message that they didn't exist.
Now before I turned 72 my brother was also 71. When I turned 72 he stayed at 71. So what's the deal? My brother was born less than a year after I as born? We have always enjoyed this situation. When we were little guys somebody always asked us how old we were . I would say 8 and he would say 8. Then the person would say , "Oh you're twins' and we would say "no." It would leave the person scratching their head. I often think back to the time when we were born and wonder how busy our Mom was. It got worse because 14 months later we had a baby sister. So a two year old was looking after one year old. Very likely neither of us were potty trained. So a one year old and two year old were sleeping in a double bed.
So I am very happy to have turned 72 . You can see the standard muffin and one candle. I got a web cam for my birthday. My wife took me out for dinner and then we went to a hockey game. Times are good.
