In about a month and a half, I'm turning 20, which is perhaps the most useless birthday ever (besides 22, after which your whole life goes downhill).
I'm not a big fan of birthdays, or parties celebrating birthdays for that matter. I was six, at Chuck E. Cheese, being serenaded by a fat, middle-aged man dressed as a giant rat. They brought out a cake, all eyes were on me, and my dream husband Chuck was holding my hand. And then my mother had to ruin it all by going into labor.
The party had to end because my mother wanted my sister to be born in a sanitary hospital. In retrospect, I don't understand why she couldn't just pop a squat in the ball pen. Women birth babies in water all the time and I'm sure plastic balls would cushion the vulnerable newborn skull just as well.
Since then, I have not had one successful birthday party.
When I turned 15, a friend made me brownies that someone inevitably ate while I was in class. And by ate, I mean took a bite out of each one and left the remains in a pyramid stacked on top of my locker. When I turned 16, my "friends" convinced me that as an initiation into womanhood, I should learn to pole dance. Like most houses, mine lacked a stripper pole, but we improvised with the garden hose. While I was "shaking" my "thang," someone thought it would be funny to turn on the water.
My 18th birthday fell a few days short of prom, and my date promised me a night on the town. This "night on the town" ended up with him cutting me out of my prom dress (it was a size 5 and I had bought it at Marshalls for $15 that day) and me getting lost in a foam party at a gay nightclub in D.C.
The only things worse than my birthday parties have been my birthday gifts. I'm not a materialistic person, really, but normal people don't get the "presents" I do:
-- A Victoria's Secret box containing three XXXL satin panties with lace trimming
-- A softcore porn magazine with pictures of my face taped onto every man's body
-- A scented candle and fragrant oil aromatherapy set (which would have been nice if it wasn't for the fact that this is what I gave her for her birthday)
-- A set of Hello Kitty action figures
-- A used gift card to Blockbuster
-- Herpes
They're all actual gifts, except for the last one, which is more of an unexpected surprise. Kind of like babies -- though the two are not correlated. I really don't have herpes, but if I did, I probably would have contracted it from the ball pen at Chuck's.
Sometimes I look at what other people get for their birthdays, and I'm a little jealous. Green velvet pajamas that make a girl look like a total babe, water-padded bras, socks. I'd even settle for a birthday card that doesn't have "Celebrate Kwanzaa" crossed out and "Happy birthday, Wendy!" written in. Or even an e-mail greeting that doesn't end in, "Don't judge me. Love, Satab" (Satab is a drunken misspelling of Satan).
I already know what's going to happen this June. I'll get a drunk dial from my friend, the Polynesian Princess who thinks that because she's a "Pacific Islander," she's exempt from the infamous Asian low tolerance. She'll be partying it up in Miami with a hooker, a hottie named Russ and a Drew Barrymore look-a-like. The phone call will have nothing to do with me turning 20; after all, I still can't buy alcohol (so really, what good am I?).
I figure, no matter what happens, my birthday this year still will be better than my 12th, when a birthday talent show ended with my best friend throwing up on my camera. Or my 14th, when my sister overheard my friends reading aloud a thrilling romance novel and, as a result of her tattling, she had my mother convinced I wanted to be a man. Though 20 could end just as badly as the last 19, at least I'll be one year closer to the best day of my life.
Winnie's column runs biweekly on Thursdays. She can be reached at Winnie@cavalierdaily.com.
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