At Least We Have Good Weather: A Life of Love and Loss

Chapter 19

Birthdays.

Don't get me wrong, I happen to LOVE birthdays...just not my own. There's nothing better than spoiling someone to the nth degree on their day of birthing, and I'm proud to say I've done some pretty awesome things for people on those days. To my own self-destruction at times of course, but still, I wouldn't have changed a single thing I've done for others.

I will always remember my "idols birthday" as one of the most special days of my life, but I do have a fairly storied history when it comes to bad birthdays. In fact, I may just qualify for the Hall of Fame of bad birthdays.

People may argue that birthdays mean less the older you get, but my misery seems to go way back to my childhood.

In preparation for what's about to come further along in this book, I'd like to share a few of my favourites with you...

1991 - 13th Birthday

Ah yes, the beginning of my teens, the end of my Primary School life, and an adventure into manhood! Well, not quite.

The year before I had lost my dad, and now just a few months later my older brother had killed himself, so suddenly in the space of a year...I was the man of the house and I had half a family.

And my mom...well, she was understandably a mess. We had spent most of the year trying to find some sort of normalcy in the insanity that had ruled our lives, the last thing anyone wanted to do was celebrate a birthday. That would be pretty damn selfish of me.

But still I was a kid, and I wanted something for my birthday, something simple. All I wanted for my birthday was a box of Trivial Pursuit (the logic that I had nobody to play with never dawned on me...I was a trivia junkie, and Trivial Pursuit was the ultimate fix).

I started playing tennis in my final year of primary school, and loved it. It was a pretty simple sort of escape from life. I will always remember one Friday afternoon, in particular, just before my birthday.

As was routine when I left practice and ran towards my mom's car, which was waiting for me outside the school as normal. When I got in the car, the first thing she asked me was where was my tracksuit top, ah damn...I left it on the tennis court! Quickly running back to go fetch it, I was in for surprise. The teacher had already locked up the courts and my tracksuit top was nowhere in sight.

I got back into the car and told my mom. She exploded and slapped me so hard on my bare leg that the hand mark was instantly visible. I remember as we pulled away, two friends on the corner of the street waved goodbye to me (unaware of what had just happened), and me always the one to fake a smile, proceeded to wave back with a big goofy fake grin and trying to hold back the tears of pain streaming down my face.

Things were about to get much worse, though. When we got home my mom ran inside while I stayed by the car to take out my bag. She came storming out the house and launched a rather large object at my face, which then hit the ground and broke open revealing plastic pie pieces and trivia cards. It was my Trivial Pursuit.

By the way, I got my tracksuit back on the Monday; the teacher took it home for safekeeping...

1999 - 21st Birthday

Oh yes, legal in every way! The big 21...no bigger excuse for a celebration right? Well, not if you don't drink, have friends or party like it's 1999.

My 21st was another event that for any normal human being would be a pretty epic celebration, and to my mom's credit she did try and make it something special. Of course, this meant an entire gathering of the family.

We had a function on the Saturday to celebrate my now late Gran's birthday the following day and my 21st the Tuesday after that, so it was a combined party basically. The usual "you're all grown up" wishes flowed in as each person arrived, then the ceremonial handing over of the 21st Key blah blah blah. Not my scene really. In fact, my speech pretty much consisted of me saying, "I don't think anyone ever thought I'd make it this far".... nothing like awkward silence at a birthday party.

The Monday before my birthday I was back at work, and I remember someone special getting me non-alcoholic champagne, which to this day was one of the most thoughtful and respectful things anyone has ever done. I live a very straight-edged lifestyle, which I will go in to detail about later in this book, but this was the first time someone had paid attention to that.

It was a short return to work, as I had taken the next day, my birthday, off. That evening however, I became violently ill, and spent the whole night puking. A good solid 15 hours of straight puking till I eventually passed out from pure exhaustion. When I eventually came round, it was 1am, Wednesday morning...I had missed my own 21st Birthday.

I went to the doctor that day, and it turned out I had blood poisoning from accidentally cutting myself with a knife when I was eating Biltong (SA's version of beef jerky).

2000 - 22nd Birthday

Birthday "parties" are awkward at the best of times. We all run through a set of pretty standard thoughts in our head:

- Do I bring a gift?

- How late should I arrive so I'm not the first one there?

- What's a good time to leave without being seen as being bored?

- What if Stifler's mom tries to do me on the pool table?

Since I don't have the answers to these questions, I tend to avoid parties, and even more so, I avoid throwing them. In fact, I just don't have the confidence to even attempt to arrange something. But this particular year, I thought "Hey, new millennium, new me...let's give it a bash!"

I prepped the invites... I was having my first ever Birthday Barbecue!

Being at a fairly new job at Intekom, I only had a handful of people that I would invite there, but I sent invites to old workmates, and school friends I had recently got in touch with. The only thing more impressive than the invitation list was the RSVP list from those who confirmed they were coming. Wow, finally, I would have someone other than the mailman coming to my house! This was huge!

The new me was looking pretty damn popular.

I even went out and bought some wine. I had brought alcohol to my own party!

The day of the barbecue arrived, and I was pretty nervous. As the hours counted down to the start time, I got everything ready - put chairs around the pool, got the old dartboard ready, took the cover off the newly purchased pool table... this was gonna be sweet.

The first car pulled up just before lunchtime, and I went out to check. Nope, wasn't for me, but was instead a neighbour's guest.

12pm...nobody was there.

1pm (which was the actual start time on the invite)...still nobody.

2pm...nobody.

3pm...nobody.

Unbelievable! I couldn't imagine how impossible this was.

Eventually I got a text message from one guest, saying, "sorry dude can't make it."

4pm ...Finally two guys arrived, and they stayed a while until a third arrived. Luckily, they all knew each other, so that avoided any awkwardness when I went to the kitchen to get snacks.

5pm ... One old school friend arrived and she stayed for about 30min. If I remember, we chatted about how good the cheese rolls from the local café were.

By 6pm, everyone had cleared out.

Out of 30 people who RSVP'd saying they'd be there, and were even reminded the day before...five people turned up. three people ate. one person excused themselves after being over 3 hours late. And the rest ...well...the other 24 apparently forgot, or got tied up. Nobody drank the wine I bought.

The kids have a word for this today. It's called a FAIL.

Perhaps my worst birthday ever!

However, little did I know, worse was still to come.