Today is My Birthday and All of My Co-workers Thought I Turned 14.

I'm sure that at some point - when I am Geriatric Emma, most likely - I will look back at times like this and scowl at 22-year-old Emma for getting pissed at people's comments about her youth and vitality. That day is not today, but the idea of revisiting past Emma birthdays amuses me, particularly because I don't think recapping the decrepit Celebrity Duets is even worth devoting two minutes of my said birthday to.

1984.

This is more than likely from about 1986 or so, but I think naked toddlers ruining Jeffrey Grimshaw's record collection are beyond funny. Particularly when they have Huggies goodness on.

I was born at the NYU Medical Center. I do not remember this. I know that I did not come out of a vagina, which is why my head continues to be perfectly round. In 2002, I returned to the Medical Center to be treated for the deadly rally monkey disease, one floor below the delivery room.

1985.
I am told that I had ice cream cake.

1989.
I had my first legit birthday party, in which my mother instructed my guests to "wear something silly." What I find disturbing about that party now, looking back at the 20 million pictures my mother took that day, is that a lot of the "silly things" that those kids were wearing seem perfectly normal to me, like wearing slippers and pajama-related apparel in public. I don't think the bodega on 3rd and 10th ever saw me in normal clothes.


1991.
My mom said that if I got good grades, I could get a cat so I would have someone/something to play with not named Big Bear. I schooled every subject except handwriting. There is an extreme anti-left-handed people bias in the NJ public school system, and my prepubescent GPA suffered as a result. So in August of that year, my parents took me to the SPCA to get my feline. I walked into the room and there were four giant cages teaming with cats, probably 10 or so in each. The bigger, stronger cats were at the front of the cage, and the tiny weak kitties were mewing pitifully in the back. Way, way in the back of one cage was a little gray and white tabby who quietly mewed and was too small to get to the front. I picked him out and named him Arnold, after the star of the movie Total Recall, which I had recently been given on old school VHS for my 7th birthday.
"That man is cute, Mom." - Emma. a VERY long time ago.

The soon-to-be morbidly obese one on the top was an early 11th birthday present.

1992.
My mother thought it would be a really, really good idea to have a birthday party at a history museum. Although my keen young Emma mind was showing great potential in that subject area, there isn't an 8-year-old on the planet that wants to ring in the anniversary of their womb exit in a colonial school house. My gay cousin Michael, then about six, was chased by a goose and cried. It was the highlight of the day.

My father said it was a homophobic goose. I didn't know what that meant, but I giggled nonetheless because essentially non-threatening animals chasing defenseless children is always funny.

1997.
I don't recall what happened during the day, but that night, my mother and I were watching Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and just as Dr. Quinn and Sully exchanged a hot, penetrating look, the program was interceded by a news report that Princess Diana had just been in a car accident. Although she technically died on August 31 because she was in France, she died on August 30, Eastern Standard Time. It was beyond morbid. It could have been worse, I suppose - my grandmother's 10th birthday was December 7, 1941.

Things that you can probably go to hell for:
Killing someone.
Stealing mad shizzle.
Conspiring with demonic creatures.
Denouncing deities.
Associating Ben Affleck's shitty movie with a notable historical event.

I am going to get birthday bovine. Moo.