It’s my birthday today, 56 years ago this morning I was being born. I don’t recall what the time was…..I was busy being overwhelmed by the birth experience and I hadn’t yet learned to tell the time. Nor did I have a watch.
My mother tells me it was early, likely sometime between 6 and 8 am, around shift change for the nurses. She remembers that clearly because as she tells it the nurses were p.o.’d because they had to stick around for my birth, and they wanted to go home. Can you imagine?
I’m not sure really why I tell you this, perhaps in hopes you’ll send me a card or buy me a gift. Maybe it’s some sort of self gratification, or a more likely reason is that I just had nothing really interesting to post so I thought I’d throw this in. Secretly, it’s probably some combination of all those reasons.
I post this photo of me to show you what a cute kid I was. Some would say I had a devilish grin but I think it was charming. I don’t really remember what this photo was taken for but obviously for some type of graduation. I’m pretty bright, but not that bright, so I know it’s not for high school. I think it may have been for a church sunday school or maybe even kindergarten. If nothing else I did graduate for that.
As it turned out this is closer to the truth than not. I never did graduate from high school as I was too busy driving around in my car or flitting about with my girlfriend, now wife. School bored me and it wasn’t until I wrote my GED about 10 or 15 years later that I had any appreciation for education. Of course by then I wished I had applied myself in school and learned the value of hard work and studying.
Unfortunately neither my teachers nor my parents saw my capabilities and as a result I was under challenged and I just took to skipping out and smoking dope. School was pretty easy and I got pretty good grades (for most of it) without attending, studying, or cracking a book. Such a mis-spent youth….oh if I could do it all over again.
To move beyond that I now have the luxury of retirement and every day seems a bit like a birthday, except for the gifts and the cake. Sometimes there’s those things too. I treat myself by doing virtually whatever pleases me and unlike my school years I now have a better sense of my capabilities, and of my needs and what is good for me. I love hard work in the yard, I enjoy using and developing my mind, and the creative side of me has found a bit of an outlet.
So full circle, I celebrate my birthday and my life. It’s been well lived with many blessings and a few heartbreaks. With a little luck and good genes I’ll have many more. I hope you can all come to my party.