MAGGI PICAYUNE

I’m running out of time on my birthday, especially in writing and achieving much else. That’s the price I pay for staying up too late after meeting Elvira and then dragging my butt on chores. I also have to blame myself for getting dragged into online chats with friends! (Don’t stop though.)

1994 was my first birthday in Austin. It was a rather blah experience and somewhat lame because I once again broke my personal rule on working which usually contributes to the negativity. I probably didn’t have any choice working for Lee at Towers anyway. Paul and Helen brighten the evening by calling to wish me well. Shortly after this point, my best French tutor Patricia came back into my life.

1999 was my first birthday back in Austin and awesome, compared to the bittersweet finale in Raleigh, NC. It was also my first (of many) birthdays with Somara. I had been an employee of Apple for three months, I had achieved a successful training trip to Sacramento and now I was sharing an apartment with Garrett. Matters were looking up. I mainly spent the day loafing around, maybe caught a movie (checked, no I didn’t) and had a great dinner at the 183 Chuy’s with all the new friends I had made in the last year: Mary, Ethan and Garrett. Bill was there but he was a recurring friend from the PowerComputing period.

I’m not going to bother with 2004. Despite having a great visit from Lee and Masami, there was a lot of anxiety building up I’d rather forget about.

Sadly or fortunately, take your pick, there aren’t any tangible photos from this day of debauchery, idiocy and chaos. Maybe Helen, Paul, Phil and Jose can scrape up something.

Regardless, it was a fantastic day which would make it my favorite birthday for many years (vomit and all). Certainly the pinnacle of the Summer of 1989, also my first successful go at living independently of my parents.

The day was already off to a great start because it was on a Saturday which meant I began celebrating on that Friday!

It began with Carrie meeting me at my apartment after the weekly grocery-store trip with Phil and Jose. There my girlfriend surprised me with a copy of Super Mario Brothers 2 for my NES. You know we went back to her place as soon as dinner was eaten…that’s where my NES resided! Around midnight we hit a nearby club because I was technically 21.

On Saturday morning I bought some booze at a liquor store in Carrie’s neighborhood. Quite a change in our relationship. We tried to cook brats in beer for brunch be neither of us had any inkling how to do this correctly, thankfully Somara does (it involves boiling the meat in the beer, then cooking). Then we hit the theater to watch Batman because it was my favorite movie of the Summer. (Now I despise it along with most films made by Tim Burton.) There was some dilly-dallying the rest of the afternoon, namely figuring out dinner. Carrie was rushing me later on yet refused to give any specifics so I took my sweet time preparing supper at my apartment before joining Phil and Jose for the evening’s festivities. Had I known Paul was the surprise guest I would’ve hurried.

The five of us kicked back for an hour at Phil and Jose’s apartment and caught up on how our Summer was progressing. Drinking was obviously involved too: it led to Phil and Carrie being the first two casualties of the evening. Phil’s third-shift job contributed to him falling asleep in what began as a quick cat nap we couldn’t rouse him from. Carrie’s situation was messier thanks to her practically guzzling vodka and then needing to vomit (not a pretty sight mixed with pasta). Due to her being an overdramatic drunk (the type who thinks the situation would lead to death), I stayed with Carrie in my friends’ bathroom coaching her and assisting her worship of the porcelain buddha. Paul later told me I sounded like a doctor delivering a baby.

With two attendees passed out safely, the rest of us hit the Marquette bar scene. For me it then gets blurry. I know I started with the free all-you-can-drink beer at the (now gone) Ardmore. Where we went afterwards is a mystery. I’m going to guess O’Paget’s because Paul worked there as a bouncer during the school year. I do recall vividly using my pancho from Mexico as a cape to imitate Batman while harassing some underclassmen (a dick move I regret). Paul sprung for my Real Chili to wind down the evening and it looked like I was going to “win” the evening by holding in my liquor. (For some weird reason, we all tried to make each other hurl on our respective 21st birthdays.) We then returned to Jose and Phil’s place after eating and Carrie (now sobered up) escorted me home.

The following morning, I “lost” courtesy of phone calls from my grandparents. Each called me separately at an unreasonable early time. I have idea what we talked about as Carrie assisted in keeping me propped up, sitting against a wall while I tried to listen attentively. After the second call concluded, I needed the trash can which Carrie frantically retrieved for me to blow chunks into.

Despite the hangover and puke, it remained the greatest birthday ever. When was it unseated? I’ll have to go with 1995 which is a story for next year.

Obviously, I'm the dork on the left. To my right would be the friends I had then: Andy (m) and Mark (r), classmates I met at Lawrence Central HS.

Contrary to America’s popular culture, I never expected my 16th birthday to be some huge magical, life-changing event nor did I anticipate a major bash one only sees in movies. Heck, I was shocked my parents would let me invite a couple friends to celebrate at the nearby Farrell’s, a now extinct restaurant-ice cream chain few even remember.

So far the Summer of 1984 sucked. My family had moved to Indianoplace around March, leaving Houston right when the weather was warming out was an unpleasant experience too. Then I was on “Spring Break” for three weeks until all the housing arrangements were finalized. I finished the last six weeks of the school year at Lawrence Central thanks to busing; Lawrence North was closer yet gangbangers from the inner city had to be sent there to maintain the region’s ethnic tensions. However, I didn’t feel much resentment for it other than North having newer facilities and it beat being enrolled in a Catholic prison like my brother insisted on attending. Still, I managed. Being the “new kid” became routine for me and I quickly made friends with the guys in the photograph; geeks and nerds have little difficulty finding each other.

School ended around late May and I spent the first half of Summer bored out of my mind. Not old enough to drive nor work, I was stranded at the house, broke, alone and obviously (being a teenager) miserable. This wasn’t radically different from the Summer of 1983 but there I could at least walk to the nearby pool to get some exercise. There were bright spots: getting to see the new Indiana Jones and Star Trek movies with the friends in the photograph; yet it wasn’t much. I’m sure the neighborhood we lived in had a few people close to my age, I just can’t recall why nothing gelled to pass the Summer.

When my birthday arrived, things improved a tad. I could finally be a minimum-wage slave! Those days it was a pathetic $3.35/hour which didn’t buy a whole lot thanks to St. Reagan keeping it low since 1981. I didn’t care too much though. What I saw was having my own money to save, spend and earn. My parents would no longer be dangling those financial carrots in front of me to push me around as much. They weren’t very thrilled over my disinterest in driver’s education too; Mark already drove, why did I need a car? Anyway, my first gig was being a busboy/dishwasher at the same Farrell’s we celebrated at. The job seemed like fun in the beginning, namely the obnoxious birthday antics they did. I learned pretty quickly how the ceremonial stuff grew old and Farrell’s was just another restaurant. I also didn’t completely absorb this lesson regarding food service drudgery for another several years thanks to the eventual move to North Dakota where any work for teenagers was scarce. Regardless of the mess, smell, jerk co-workers and uncivil customers, the paycheck I put away in my savings account every two weeks salvaged a rather lousy Summer.