bewize

My birthdays are cursed.

True facts. They really are.

I no longer celebrate them, except in a twisted sort of way, when they're over and I've survived. Let us look at a few, shall we? I believe these will illustrate my point.

But before that, I should mention I have the second most dreaded of birthday times. The worst birthday to have, I would imagine, is on Christmas or Christmas Eve. The festivity of your birth is totally overshadowed by the festivity of another birth that happened two thousand years ago, whether you believe its implications or not.

Nope, I’m not a Christmas baby. My birthday falls in the summer - right smack dab in the middle, the day after the solstice. June 22nd. The time of year when there is no school, all your friends are on vacation, having childhood birthday parties is hard to pull off, and summer school destroys all chances of anything else.

But this is not the reason that my birthdays are cursed. This is just the reason that I celebrated so few of them in my childhood and didn't come tot he conclusion that they were cursed until I was older.

Examples, you say? Examples, I will give!

When I was seven years old, I planned a party. And by "I," I mean my mother. Anyway, I digress. The day before the party was to happen, my little sister went into the hospital. (This was not unusual, as she had severe kidney problems for most of our childhood.)

I’m sure I don’t have to explain – cancelled party, I was shipped to the grandparents, and we ate stale birthday cake a week later when my sister got to come home.

Ah, but that’s probably just a coincidence. I can hear you saying that from here.

Really? You think so?

Allow me to offer my twelfth birthday as example two. I had a party! Some friends, a pizza, loud music, a swimming pool, a very hot lifeguard who taught us all how to do somersault dives – do I really need to spell this one out for you?

Yep. I knocked myself unconscious on the diving board and had to be rescued by the very hot lifeguard. This is not as romantic as it sounds, because I had a horrible headache and a raging case of pre-teenagery mortification. (Spitting out lungfuls of water in front of superhot lifeguard? So NOT how I wanted to spend my twelfth birthday.)

Fourteenth birthday? Parents got divorced.

Sixteenth birthday? Flu.

Eighteenth birthday? Car crash.

And at that point, I learned to stop celebrating my birthday. It wasn’t worth it.

But, along came birthday 25 and I decided… surely, I’d been overreacting before. I mean, they had to be coincidences, right? Right?

Wrong.

WRONG.

SO EPICALLY WRONG.

I was working then, and leaving the office at noon so that I could meet friends for lunch. (Therein lies the downfall. Lunch with friends = celebration.) I walked out the front door of my office, got into the elevator and pressed ground.

I was alone in the elevator. It started moving. And then… there was a horrible noise. The entire elevator shook. This was followed by the most alarming part of all.

The elevator dropped eight floors.

Finally, the brakes kicked in, flinging me to the floor, where I huddled in a ball waiting for the crunchy part. When nothing else happened, I crawled to the emergency phone. I’m not sure what the man who answered my hysterical call thought. I’m not sure that he could understand me. I’m pretty sure that frequency is reserved for dogs and bats.

Suffice it to say, eventually security came. And then more security. And then the fire department. And finally, the elevator repair man. Ninety minutes later, I was free.

I had a sprained wrist and a broken cell phone from where I’d hit the wall and the elevator floor respectively. The elevator repair man came over to me and said, very excitedly, “Did you hear a banging noise on the top of the elevator?”

“Yes. I did.”

“That was the cable unwrapping.”

SCREAM

The building sent me “We’re so sorry, thank you for not suing us” flowers. See?

I finally arrived to lunch and was grateful that my friends had waited on me. We were sitting on an outdoor patio, and I was explaining what had happened, when a firetruck pulled up and the entire brigade ran into the restaurant next door.

There was a gas leak.

I'm not making this up. I don't think you can make this stuff up!

So, my thirtieth birthday is next. Who’s up for the party? The only thing I can promise is this:

It’s bound to be memorable!

This entry was written in response to the

therealljidol Challenge 5: Open Topic. There will be voting for this week's entries. I will make sure to link to the poll once it is put up and I would appreciate it if you would vote for me if you enjoy my entry. As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.