I Can't Say

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 21, Verse 14

"An angry man is silenced by giving him a gift!"

CHIPPED WISDOM:

My birthday's coming up soon.  I'll be thirty-three.  I share my birthday, May 12th, with a host of colorful characters who were, are, and always will be, more famous than me:

Katie Hepburn, famous star of the silver screen and the first woman to wear pants at Bryn Mawr, or something.

Florence Nightingale.  She was a nurse, you know.

Skater dude Tony Hawk, Sheen dude Emilio Estevez, and Ving Rhames, the funny Secret Service agent from "Dave".  

Hahaha-- he said, "I can't say".  

That's funny!

Usually, around about this late Aprily time of year, I start to get a hankering for certain material items that might serve to fill some kind of voidiferous void in my existence.  Some hole that one might put something in, say, something from an antique shop.  Or say, e-Bay, which is really just an antique shop without that musty smell that makes you somehow instantly have to take a huge shit.  

Don't ask.  I'm no gastroenterologist.  I don't understand it.

This year, I got nothing.  This is kind of driving my wife up the wall, as she cares about these things and wants to make me happy, and that's nice.  I suppose what I really want for my birthday is a wife who cares about making me happy on my birthday, and I've got that, so I'm pretty good.  A month or so ago, I asked for permission to demolish our old vacuum cleaner that sucked (HA!  "I can't say".  GENIUS!!!) and for further permission to purchase a new one which I thoroughly vetted.  (It's a Shark Professional Navigator Lift-Away Upright Vacuum, Model NV356e and no they aren't paying me to endorse their product but they kind of fucking should now that I think about it and if you're a Shark marketing asshole who stumbled upon this blog while Googling your product, I think you should send me a check.)

So, I spent $200 on this vacuum, and I absolutely love it.  Now that we have a Basset Hound that sheds like a bastard (and isn't 100% potty trained -- why?  I CAN'T SAY!  AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!) we need a vacuum cleaner that rocks the Casbah, whether Sharif likes it or not.  That was kind of a gift.  From me.  To me.  I love using it.  I love emptying out the canister that fills up with unholy amounts of dust and shit in a matter of, oh, three minutes.  It brings me immense joy to know that, for the next twenty-seven minutes, our living room carpet is clean.  

(Ish.)

So, what do you buy for the man who has a lovely wife, two beautiful babies, a slobbery, almost-there dog, and a Shark Professional Navigator Lift-Away Upright Vacuum, Model NV356e and who, hence, has everything?

I CAN'T SAY!

I'm pretty ambivalent about my birthday this year.  I don't know why-- I always have a good time, especially since I've been married.  My wife knows the protocol.  She decorates the dining room, the way my parents used to do for me when I was a boy.  And a lot... older than... a boy.  There is a delectable home-made comestible that is set ablaze in the customary manner.  And there are always thoughtful, useful, silly, wonderful gifts, even when she struggles to come up with something.  She always pulls a hat-trick out of her ass, and, while that sounds uncomfortable, it is always appreciated, and always just right.

This year, though?  I don't know.  I'm somewhere else.  I'm resisting.  I'm not allowing my brain to go there.  My father hates his birthday, or at least he pretends (very well) to hate it.  "WHAT BIRTHDAY, EVERY DAY IS MY FUCKING BIRTHDAY!" he'll roar in that precious Israeli way of his.  I kind of feel like every day is Victoria Day, but I'm in therapy for that, and other things.  Speaking of which, I want to be not depressed anymore.  Or angry.  Or anxious.  Or hopeless.  Or sad.  

Can I have that for my birthday?  Do they have that at Kohl's?  Is there an apostrophe in Kohl's?  

My birthday parties growing up were always at home.  Always.  Me and my awkward friends assembled in the dining room and I held court around the table, which handily extended to accommodate the pre-pubescent awkwardness, imitating uninvited leper classmates and socially imprudent elementary school teachers with whom we were all familiar.  Home-made (my mother was different then) cake was served and then we would go out side to play a lusty game of Ga-Ga, an Israeli sport that mixes soccer, dodgeball and counterinsurgency tactics, with my father (who was never different).  I loved being outside playing this game that involved grass, a ball, and the very real chance of getting injured, which clearly means that I was definitely different then.  After the game, parents picked up their children and were generally not amused to find that the party favor for attending my party was something living: a hermit crab one year, newts another.  There were Siamese fighting fish and baby frogs, too.  I'm glad we gave up this pet party favor thing by the time I had my Bar Mitzvah, or my friends' parents would have had a hell of a time shoving their kids' new donkeys into the trunks of their sedans.

May 12th will be a quieter day this year, I think.  I have the astonishing good fortune to be off on my birthday this year, and that is present enough.  I will cling tightly to my family and my dog on my freshly vacuumed rug and wonder about how I ever got to be thirty-three, and what the hell does that even mean anyway?  I hope you know, because Sharif don't like it.  Why?  

Eh-- you know.