My Birthday

June 29th, 2010 was a particularly good birthday for these reasons:
1) I woke up. Any day that starts this way is a good one.

2) My coworkers had decorated my door with all kinds of arts-and-crafts style decorations wishing me a happy birthday. There was construction paper, yarn and Elmer's glue a-plenty.

3) The moment I walked in the door of the Youth Center, I was mobbed by kids. They all screamed "Happy birthday!" in unison then proceeded to hand me card after card. All were handmade and all were misspelled. Some of my favorites:

- "Happy Brthix Birthday Day" (and on the inside) "You are the Best in the Wolad. You Rock and Roads. Thank you for being my best Buty"
- "World Grates Colstle"
- "5 Rules about Mr. Rocky Road" (that's me, by the way) "1. Love Mr. Rocky Road 2. Respect Mr. Rocky Road 3. Like Mr. Rocky Road 4. Thank Mr. Rocky Road 5. Have fun with Mr. Rocky Road"

4) We went on a field trip to see the New Orleans Zephyrs play the Iowa Cubs. For a minor league team, they have one nice stadium. Any time you get to go to a ball game for free on your birthday is a good day.

5) Because the base pays for our field trips, the ticket was free. So was the lunch at the game. Included: hot dog, chips and chocolate milk. Everyone got one. I sat there munching and thinking to myself "when's the last time you got a free lunch AND a free baseball game?"

6) The Zephyr's hit a grand slam. Cue the noise. Our campers were definitely screaming the loudest.

7) Ms. Mindy (woman whose house we went to, hereby known as adopted mother) secretly orchestrated a happy birthday wish to be on the Jumbotron. I was blown away. I didn't actually see it because I had to take one of my campers to go #2, but the fact that someone I have known for barely a month would do that for me just shows me how incredible she is. I don't think I have met anyone as generous and thoughtful as her (besides my REAL mother, of course. Hi mom!).

8) We met the mascot. He looks like a beaver but is in fact a nutria. For those that don't know, a nutria is like a giant rat that lives in the water. Or if you're Jake Westrup, its a giant demon-monster bent on killing you.

9) Back at the center, my adopted mother presented me with... wait for it... a soccer ball cake. It was homemade with chocolate cake inside and buttercream frosting on the outside. It was a perfect half-orb and was even sitting on a bed of green frosting. When I was marvelling at the perfection of the ball's "stitching", Ms. Mindy had this to say: "Oh doing it wasn't so bad. I just printed out some pentagons and hexagons like a real soccer ball has then transferred those shapes to cardstock, cut them out and traced around them with the dark frosting". If you're keeping track, thats at least a four-step process just to apply the frosting. Keep in mind, this doesn't even include all the other steps I'm sure she went through; buying special ingredients (who has green frosting laying around?), forming a perfect half soccer ball shape, actually BAKING the cake. I'm no cake boss but when you work a full time job and have a family of four, I can't imagine making a cake of this magnitude is a simple off-the-cusp task.

10) The rest of the day was free time so the kids all decided to adorn me with pipe-cleaner jewelry. At one count, I had 64 pipe cleaners on my person. That includes all ten fingers, both wrists, my neck, a pair of ppipe-cleaner glasses and multiple headdresses. I'll post a picture when I have one. Each time I was brought a new piece of jewelry, it was accompanied by a sing-song "Happy birthday, Mr. Rocky Road!" Enough to make a cold-heart like mine melt.

11) Habachi. My first experience at a Benihana's style restaurant came last night when we went to Fujihana. What looked like a typical stripmall style eatery turned out to be an upscale habachi restaurant. We arrived at nine so the place was pretty slow but it was still a riot. We never caught our chef's name but he had some good one-liners.

- (flipping a butter paddy onto the stove) "Look! Japanese butterfly!"
- (rolling an egg at one of our dinner party) "Look! American eggroll!"
- (spinning an egg, catching it on a spatula and flinging it into the air) "Look! Japanese Eg--"
- (realizing the egg didn't land in his hat as planned but instead broke on the front and was dribbling down) "Awww..."
- (after doing an impressive spatula flinging routine) "Wanna see that again? Come back tomorrow night"

An offhand comment that it was my birthday must have been noticed because four employees emerged from the back banging drums in an almost Reggae fashion whilst singing happy birthday. Free dessert ensued as did photos and a sly pocketing of the birthday candle as a memento of my special day.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

As I told my campers at the end of the day, my birthday was a particularly special one. The love I felt came from the genuineness of my gifts: a homemade cake, a handmade card. Even though I didn't see my name on the Jumbotron, the fact that someone would consider even researching the possibility of doing that for me, let alone following through with it amazes me. Thirty days ago, I hadn't even seen my coworkers in person. Yesterday, they set decorated my door and bought me dinner.