Birthday Boy

Scott's Hermetically-Sealed Birthday Mini-Cake

Scott's birthday used to be a source of discomfort for both of us (and I suspect for anyone else who cares about him). I want to do something nice for him on that day, and he doesn't want to be acknowledged. While I liked what he had to say last year, he would prefer it if he never received a card, a gift, personal acknowledgement, a phone call or email if it concerns birthday wishes directed at him. He says it "always makes him feel sad."

Any form of singling him out for the festive celebration of his emergence (into a world that he's frequently found so painful to occupy) just doesn't make any sense to him. Plus, he considers your true birthday a combination of various moments. When the science happened, in the womb, in a timeline and elsewhere.

In case you were unaware, your birthday has nothing to do with when you traveled down the birth canal and out into the waiting world. It's not about the "act" mind you, or the moment that the egg met the sperm, though those events do count. For Scott, pinpointing your true birthday is a complicated scenario involving many separate events and dates back to when your mother was born, and that's not the end of it.

From there, it takes twists and turns, with various limitations dependent on which sex you are. To his disappointment, no one seems to really care about the accuracy of calculating your true birthday. Why even bother, if you don't take the time to make the chronology of someone's true birthday meaningfully accurate? (I'd like to see what that line of birthday greeting cards would look like!)

For a four-minute audio discussion we had concerning his theory, click here. I wanted to make sure I got it right.

After about three birthdays together, I finally understood that it caused more harm than good to offer him a birthday card and/or wrapped gift. I'd explain that I couldn't just "do nothing" because it made me feel sad. I'd explain that to commemorate his arrival on the planet gave me joy. I got away with saying that, but it didn't seem to diminish his dislike or discomfort for the ritual, so it didn't actually give me joy after all.

I finally accepted that it was selfish of me to want to force a "Happy Birthday" on him. The best birthday gifts for him, regardless of the day they occur, have been events. For example, he exhibited pure joy and his shiny, hope-filled raccoon-eyes lit up when the Large Hadron Collider went live, when the Wolfram Alpha site went live and when Ronald Reagan ceased to be alive, which actually happened on Scott's birthday in 2004. (My apologies to the Reagan family, but while Scott enjoyed the actor, he was not a big fan of the politician.)

Of course, I made plans to spend his birthday with him on the island, since I've been on the mainland so much recently. I made a boat reservation, baked a plain white mini-cake with plain white whipped-cream frosting and no decorations (this is Scott, remember). I carefully loaded it into a little white cooler, determined that it would be no more than a few hours old when he tasted it...

Waiting to Board

Ten minutes from the Island. What a beautiful day!

The little cake survived the trip intact and Scott was appreciative when he saw it. So far so good! For me however, the birthday fun happened after my daughter called to see how it went. I took a photo of Scott and sent it to her so she could see him enjoying his little cake.

An hour later she sent me the altered photos below. The iPhone has added some new "Apps" which she downloaded recently. I can certainly see their allure. These shots were created using the "Mulletizer", "Stache-tastic" and "80s Hair".

Ahem...After enjoying the mullet, please notice the fly on the cake.

I'm speechless (because I'm laughing too hard).

This redefines "Disco" (and Afro)

I'm not sure if this one makes him look younger, or like the lost Osmond...

When I showed these shots to Scott, he smiled and said, "It's silly, but I would have played with that App for a solid week when I was 13." Me too, and then some.

It seems we managed to have just a teeny bit of fun in celebration of his "special day" after all. It's really just the equivalent of him wearing a festive party hat...but without the overhead of actually putting one on...