Happy Birthdays....

Yes, my special day of the year is here. You know how some people celebrate birthweeks, or birthmonths, and not just their birthdays? I'm not one of those people. I'm kind of funny when it comes to my birthday because I don't want to draw attention to myself, but I still like for other people to remember me.

Today I hit the big 2-9. This particular birthday doesn't come with any special perks. I don't get to buy cigarettes, finally get my driver's license, or swim at the pool by myself. I already passed all of those benchmarks. Next year is 30, and then in 6 years I think I can finally make a run for president, but other than that, nothing really special about this birthday.

One of my favorite and most fun birthdays ended up being my freshman year at BYU. One of the most thoughtful things that Dave's mom ever did (and that was not even belated or anything either) was send me a birthday in a box. It was a bunch of dumb games and toys, which totally happens to be her specialty. For a lot of people, it would have been lame, but for my group of friends it was perfect. We ended up playing them all in the cafeteria, and somewhere I still have the pictures.

Last week I was going through this box of remembrance that I have, and I came across a birthday card from Brenna and Laura, and I laughed out loud. This was Laura's note to me:

Dear Christopher,

I wanted to sign the card myself. I love you Chris! Homosexual guys make the bestest friends! Ha ha ha. I know you loved our April Fool's jokes! We rule! 15 days and you did not even know! Happy 12th Birthday (you are a deacon!)

Love, Laura

Mowin' the lawn, mowin' the lawn, mowin' the lawn BOY!

I loved the 12th Birthday comment because it was so random; I forgot all about the emphasis on the lawn mower dance move from that year; I love that even back then I was getting a lot of gay jokes; and I loved the reference to probably the best April Fool's joke that anyone ever played on me (and Dave).

In 1999, nobody had cellphones, but in the BYU dorms, there was this awesome answering machine that somehow turned into one of the most fun things in the world. One of our friends recorded all of our favorite messages on a CD that I still have to this day. One of the messages on the CD was Laura and Brenna's April Fool's Joke - they had replaced our outgoing message with this:



(I'm pretty proud of the fact that I figured out how to post a sound file to my blog. That amounted to about an hour of my time from last Saturday.)

The funny thing was that NO ONE ever laughed or even mentioned on any of their messages the strange new outgoing message we had. We didn't know until 15 days later when we called our own phone and heard it for ourselves. By the way, everything on the message is true: Dave and I loved Herbal Essences shampoo and did share a bar of Caress soap. I love love love that they used their "girl" voices while imitating us.

To this day I still don't think it's a big deal to share a bar of soap with another person. One of our other friends who also thought it was gross compared it to peeing in a river because it's essentially not the same river. Expecting that comparison to wake us up and gross us out, we agreed with him instead and felt like he was proving our point. He looked at us like we were idiots.

Anyway, I write this post as just a big thank you to all of you five or so readers out there. My life is so rich because I know all of you. I can't say enough about how much I love the people in my life. I am so deeply blessed with the friends and family that I have, and I couldn't be more grateful for all the fun, funny, and wonderful ways you've remembered me on my birthday.

Thanks.