5 for Friday: Birthday memories

Caitlin, myself and a very young Zach circa 1997. Although this was technically Zach's first birthday, celebrating with the family is always nice.

As I said with my last post, Wednesday was my birthday.

I have had a lot of great birthdays (many that have happened in the past few years have been especially fun), so I thought I would trudge through memory lane and come up with some highlights.

Getting that morphing Michelangelo toy
As I posted before, I was never the biggest fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Although that did not stop me from wanting the toys any less. I had a few, like the changing April O’Neal and a Michelangelo from the third movie, but by far my favorite was the transforming Mike which turned from a turtle into a, um, “Turtle.” There was a catch -- I received this particular gift right before I went to school, probably in kindergarten or 1st grade. I wanted it so bad that I begged to open a toy before classes, only to be told that I couldn’t take it with me. White people problems.

2nd grade birthday party
I mentioned in another post that I had a birthday party when I was in the 2nd grade. And at that time I was obsessed with the Power Rangers. It was the obligatory bowling alley birthday party, which involved a good deal of me being really bad at bowling. I also got a few Power Rangers toys and had a Power Rangers cake. I guess that measures success.

6th grade birthday party
There were a few things I remember about the sleep-over birthday party I had in the 6th grade. Of those things that stood out in particular, was watching “Boy Meets World” on TGIF, playing “Fatal Fury Special” on NES (two years later I stayed up all night with another group of friends and we played “Sim City” on Nintendo throughout the night fueled by two cases of Mountain Dew and pizza) and that I did not want a cake, but instead brownies were made which I decorated with X-Men toys. It was too awesome for words.

The year I threw up
Sadly, this is not the first memory I have posted involving vomit. There is a solid chance it won’t be the last either.

One birthday I was given the option of choosing the menu, as is typically the case with people celebrating the anniversary of their birth. For this year, I had my dad make mushroom pizza and at the grocery store I picked out one of those boxed dessert monstrosities prepared by the Jell-O company in all of their infinite wisdom. The "Mississippi Mud" (as my brother Chris had called to correct me on) was delicious I’m sure, but somewhere between my being under the weather and force feeding myself too much of either item,  I ended up seeing my dinner again later that night. Possibly the most memorable part of this situation came the next day, when my dad said they had bagged it up for my breakfast. I believed him.

It’s strange that some of my most vivid childhood memories involve vomit.

I love my mother, but she could never make treats as cool as this.

Bringing treats into school
OK, I could go into some of my more, adult birthdays over the past few years and some of the better gifts I have received, but it’s also fun to think about giving gifts, too. Even if I owe a thank you to my mom for most of those years, giving birthday treats was always a lot of fun to do in school. As I’m sure is the case for most kids, this only happened for the years of my youth, because there is always a point where making up elaborate cupcakes to feed each of your classmates gets a little out of hand. But it is a tradition I enjoyed, and there are even a few treats I can recall, including the year I gave everyone Twizzlers with a grey ribbon tied around them (for not liking sports, it’s odd that I felt compelled to do an OSU themed birthday treat, but it was the fall so it seemed to make sense).