My birthday is February 14th. For all you that are unaware of the significance of this day, allow me to interpret; this is Valentine’s Day. This is the one day set aside to communicate your feelings of devotion with chocolate treats or shiny trinkets. It would be unlike me to mention that my birth date happens to coincide with a national holiday for the purposes of soliciting a gift. As a serious journalist with a public forum, this would pose a small conflict of interest. Some might see this as wrong. However, I feel strongly that subtle hints are completely acceptable without being presumptuous.
After all, who am I to deny the pleasure of another person who happens to faithfully follow the wise mantra of “‘tis better to give than receive” especially on birthdays/federal holidays? I would maintain that denying a fellow human and more importantly, a loyal reader, this small token would be the real crime. In a theoretical way, I am doing a service by benevolently allowing someone to bestow bounties to me on my birthday. Yes, I am the true giver in this situation.
Although, currently I expect the whole country to celebrate my birthday, my expectations were not always so lofty. As a kid, my actual birthday, fell more often than not, during the week, so I was unfairly forced to go to school. Shouldn’t there be a law against forcing anyone to learn on their birthday? I also assumed that I was kind of an afterthought because my mom would receive a gift as well. My dad would hand her an enormous heart-shaped box full of the most delicious chocolate candy that I had ever tasted followed by a tiny velvet box that always made her scream. Usually, I was only allowed a couple pieces before she shut the lid and hid them somewhere in her bedroom (at the top of her closet, over to the left and under her ratty pink bathrobe).
On Saturday, after I waited sometimes an entire week, my folks would throw me a party where there would always be two cakes. One for the party goers that was purchased in the bakery department of the local Piggly Wiggly and a smaller version personalized just for me that my mother would bake. My mom has lots of great qualities, but baking is just not one of them. The boxed Duncan Hines cake mix would of course start out with promises of grandeur, but my mom seemed to annually overestimate her culinary prowess and the more frustrated she became, the more she compensated by having a glass of wine.
By the time her chocolate heart shaped concoction was carted out, it tended to resemble an actual organ than the one she pictured in her mind. One year, my mother was proudly delivering her token of love to the table ablaze with candles when we noticed that the candles seemed to shrink on her approach. The cake actually seemed to be devouring the candles one by one. My mother seemed blissfully oblivious to this paranormal phenomenon.
There was a semi-logical explanation for this: After a couple martinis, my mother fancied herself some sort of structural engineer and since most of the original cake was still in the kitchen stuck to the pan, she simply filled the empty spaces with chocolate frosting. The hotter that frosting became, the less support it provided to the tiny torches that were precariously perched on top. By the time the “cake” reached the table, there were only a few lighted nubs barely poking through the surface and the rest were gently sliding down the side.
It’s hard to fault my mother for her culinary creativity when she was always the loudest singing “Happy Birthday” no matter the condition of the cake when it finally arrived. My mom hated cooking, she loathed it actually, and I am convinced that we would have all starved to death had it not been for pre-packaged meals and pizza delivery. So even as a kid, I knew she meant well and did it out of love.
Now however, as a semi-local pseudo celebrity, born on a global holiday, good intentions are not nearly as favorable to me as tangible tokens. While I am not overtly requesting that you remember your most trusted dating columnist, turned serious journalist on February 14th by dropping off wrapped packages at my office, I am hinting that they will not be turned away… That would be rude.
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