My birthday

My birthday is coming up on Saturday, so I'm going to remember as many details as I can about the past birthdays of my life.

2011. I went to work, and in the morning I had to get a box split (the order was too big for one box). I went up to the leads' offices and asked Dave to split it. He started asking me some questions. He asked me how old I was; I told him 23 but I didn't tell him it was as of that day. He asked me what I was studying. Later that day we had our weekly Thursday 10:30 meeting. At the end of the meeting, my coworker Michelle told everyone it was my birthday. I went home at the end of my shift; I think that was the day my sister brought me the present she had bought me, a battery-operated light-up Snoopy picture. I looked at the price tag and was surprised it cost as much as it did. When my mom came home, she brought in Hot-&-Readys for dinner. She presented me with gifts, which she held behind her back and gave to me one at a time. She gave me a ten-pack of Almond Joys, Lady Antebellum's album Own the Night, and Kelly Clarkson's album Thankful. She told me she got me Thankful because it might have Thanksgiving songs, although I was skeptical. She wrote on my cake with red frosting and put candles on it; I think there was wax on the cake by the time she had lit them and I had blown them out. Then I put my new CDs in the stereo and listened to them.

2010. When I went to the kitchen in the morning, I discovered that my dad had already eaten some of the cake that my mom had made the night before. In the morning I went and drove to the Walgreen's by Kmart. I was dismayed by their poor selection of Halloween things, so then I drove to the Walgreen's nearer to Shopko. I bought some pajama pants that said "It's the Great Pumpkin" and had four Peanuts characters in a miniature pumpkin patch. I think I also bought some mechanical pencils. Then I came home and folded laundry while watching Green Acres; I can't remember if I was finishing the first season or starting the third season. Later my family all came home and I showed them the pajamas I bought; my mom said I could use them for Thanksgiving (I disagree) and it was said that I should tell my grandparents that I used their birthday money to buy them. Then my mom took me and my niece to go get my new green and black bicycle. After picking it up, we went to JoAnn's crafts in Centerville. We looked at the holiday fabrics. I was surprised that their Fourth of July material wasn't on sale. My mom let me get four yards of fabric for pillowcases: one was a Peanuts Fourth of July case, one was orange and black checks (I think I got that instead of a Halloween Peanuts fabric), one was black with green bats, and one was brown with Thanksgiving turkeys. While we were at the fabric counter getting the fabrics cut, Allie told the employee, "My uncle likes Charlie Brown and he's 22!" She didn't know I was standing right behind her. The employee talked about making costumes for relatives who wanted to be the Princess and the Frog; Allie was able to specify that the Princess's name is Tiana. When we left JoAnn's we passed Arctic Circle, where the marquee advertised that they then had pumpkin shakes.

2009. I remember biking on Hemlock Ave., near the home of the Coopers, when the Watkins, the members who were providing our dinner that day, called and asked what kind of Subway sandwiches we wanted. I think I said I wanted turkey. Then we ate them at dinner time. That night I wrote in my journal 21 things I was grateful for. But I don't feel like reproducing them here. When I was writing, we got a call from Sister Palmer, our mission president's wife. I figured it was for Elder Tamblyn, since he had a lot of health issues, so I gave the phone to him, but it turned out it was for me; Sister Palmer was wishing me a happy birthday.

2008. In the morning we went to the stake center, as was typical, to email our families. I remember my Dad's email saying my intelligence would go up now that I was no longer a teenager. This is my email for the day: "Yesterday, the 28th, I turned ten. Today, the 29th, I turned twenty. I was in fourth grade the last time I changed a decade. I still feel like a kid. I am overwhelmed at the thought of being in my twenties. I guess I always felt that being old was for other people, but not for me. Ack!

"Thanks very much for the package. I am very disappointed at M&Ms, because they added green and purple to the Halloween mix. A few weeks ago before the Halloween season started I pondered if I should consider purple a Halloween color, but I ultimately decided against it. One of the grounds for doing so was that M&Ms had no purple for Halloween. And then they disappointed me by adding those extra colors. I can kind of see purple but green is absolutely out of the question.

"It's been so long since I've cashed a check I don't remember how to cash Grandma and Grandpa's, especially since they don't have American First up here. I don't even know where a bank is in this area.

"We had our interviews this week. I asked President Clark if he had any ideas about our transfers. He didn't know, but he said three transfers is too short to stay in an area, that it's usually supposed to be four to six. So I may be here another seven weeks, since this is the last week of the transfer. We will find out probably on Saturday morning before conference. We get to attend few meetings other than regular church meetings, but we get to view all five sessions of conference. It's also the time we are reunited with our suit coats full-time. It's supposed to be in the 80s or 90s again this week >-( so that might not work too well.

"I have more to write but I'm losing time, so I will definitely try to write snail mail today. But I can't guarantee anything.

"Love,

"Your elderly son"
When we came home from the church, I had received a basket that my family had ordered for me. It was addressed to "Letter Mark," playing off of my niece's misunderstanding of the word "Elder." The basket had a banana, a cluster of grapes, a red apple, some Raisinets, and some other goodies. Sister Knighten, the member we lived with, said that the delivery people had asked if I lived there and she said yes. She made us tacos for lunch. They were good and I was very grateful, although we were planning on going to lunch. We picked up Elder Moench and Elder Dobbins and we went to a Mexican restaurant. I remember discussing praying in public--I don't like to because I feel like a Pharisee. Elder Moench said that was why he prayed with his eyes open. Elder Dobbins said that the previous mission president had said that missionaries shouldn't pray in public because it made them seem self-righteous. I think that led to a conversation about how that same president had said all Christmas music was approved to listen to. Elder Dobbins said, "My thought is, if it's real Christmas music, that is about the Savior, shouldn't it be approved year round?" That might have been what led to the discussion of The Nightmare Before Christmas, and I proceeded to recite the movie:
"'Twas a long time ago, longer now than it seems,
In a place that perhaps you've seen in your dreams.
For the story you are about to be told
Took place in the holiday worlds of old.
Now, you've probably wondered where holidays come from.
If you haven't, I'd say it's time you'd begun!"
I then explained that the movie then had the song "This Is Halloween," but that I wasn't going to sing it. But then I continued:
"Whee! It's over"
"We did it!"
"Wasn't it terrifying?"
"What a night!"
"Great Halloween everybody!"
"I believe it was our most horrible yet. Thank you everybody."
"No, thanks to you Jack. Without your brilliant leadership..."
"Not at all, Mayor."
"You're such a scream, Jack."
"You're a witch's fondest dream."
"You made walls fall, Jack."
"Walls fall? You made the deadly mountains black, Jack!"
"The deadly nightshade you slipped into my tea wore off, Sally."
"Let go!"
"You're not ready for so much excitement."
"Yes I am."
"You're coming with me!"
"No I'm not!"
"Come back here you foolish...Ow! Oh! Ohhh!"
"Jack, you make wounds ooze and flesh crawl!"
"Thank you! Thank you! Very much!"
"Hold it! We haven't given out our prizes yet! Our first award goes to the vampires for 'Most blood drained in a single evening.' Our second and honorable mention goes to the fabulous Dark Lagoon leeches."
I stopped there. (By the way, I still did that all from memory.) After lunch we went to Goodwill. I found a Rudolph tie that I bought for two dollars. I remember seeing a Time Out for Women bag there. Our ward's Relief Society president, Sister Caldwell, was also there. Elder Moench and Elder Dobbins looked at t-shirts. There was one that was "things you shouldn't say to your date's parents." The first one was, "I just got my learner's permit today." Elder Dobbins said that was true. The rest of them got progressively more inappropriate. We went to Fred Meyer, where I saw a display of jack-o-lantern dodgeballs. I said I wanted to get one to play dodgeball. Elder Dobbins liked the idea, and said to me, quoting The Testaments, "You are a specter from the gods." I think all four of us ended up buying dodgeballs. I also bought some mint Oreos. Then we went to dinner with the Harts, who had previously served in the mission office. Then we went and saw one Jason Smith, whom we had not contacted for a few weeks. He wanted to give me a pen he got at the Space Needle for my birthday, but I felt bad so I declined. We asked him to pray and in his prayer he prayed "that Elder Melville will have a good birthday." I was touched he would pray for me--I didn't even know he knew my name. Then that night I wrote in my journal:
"Today was a good birthday. When we got home from basketball my family had sent me a gift basket from a local floral shop. We ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and went shopping. I bought a pumpkin dodgeball and a Rudolph tie from Goodwill.

"We later had dinner with the Harts, and met with Jason again. He prayed specifically for me to have a good birthday, and he said he forgot to buy me something. He offered a Space Needle pen but I declined.

"Sister Clark called to end the birthday. I can't believe I'm twenty."  

2007. I got up in the morning before going to work and my family gave me presents. I got some Joe Cool pajamas (for my mission), the third season of Green Acres, and some spooky eye lights for Halloween from my parents. My sister got me Coldplay's album Parachutes; I had never heard of Coldplay and I didn't know whether the name of the band was Coldplay or Parachutes. I thought it was an odd gift, considering that I was leaving on my mission in two months. I listened to this new CD as I drove to work in the rain; the songs all sounded so similar to each other that I was convinced that the CD was really short and had restarted itself. (It hadn't.) At one point my coworker Alice told my coworker Helen that it was my birthday; Helen asked, "How old are you, Precious?" I told her nineteen. At one point I looked outside and saw that it was no longer simply raining; it had started snowing. My coworkers were pretty silly that day. This might have been the day they brought a cat decoration to the deli and put a hairnet on it, saying it was Helen. They also brought a bunch of animal magnets in and put them on the fryer vent. Each animal represented one of us. I was the alligator because I apparently always had a cheesy smile on my face. I think my African coworker Awilli was the fish. They assigned our ornery coworker Ursula to be the bear. Later, Ursula asked which animal she was. Alice told her she was the bear (but didn't tell her why) and I wondered what her reaction would be. She said, "Oh, that's perfect!" She then explained that Ursula means bear, as in Ursa Major. During one of my breaks--either lunch or a short break--I saw Helen at the checkout. I told her about Ursula's reaction, and Helen said, "She can't be the bear anymore!" She then said she had looked for an octopus but couldn't find one. Eventually my shift was over and I drove home. I was delighted to find that there was snow on the lawn at my house--it was the earliest I ever remembered snow actually sticking to the ground at my house. My dad had cleaned the carpets, so we had to step gingerly, if at all. We had Papa John's pizza and my aunt and some cousins came. I remember Quin wanted to watch Gilligan's Island but Susanne told him I got to choose what to watch. I wanted to watch Green Acres. I watched some first season episodes, including the one in which Eleanor the cow was having a baby but everyone thought it was Lisa. Quin was really amused by Uncle Joe's misspelling of baby as babie. Sue seemed amused by the premise of the episode.

2006. I remember coming home from school and watching a clip from Munster Go Home! on TV.com. I showed it to my mom and said it had just come out on DVD. She said she didn't believe it had because she had looked for it but couldn't find it. I told her that I had noticed that Best Buy had it, so she called them. When it was confirmed they had it, she went and bought it, but before she and my sister left they gave me the Corpse Bride soundtrack. She came back with the movie and we had Papa John's while I watched both movies on the DVD, Munster Go Home! and The Munsters' Revenge.

2005. I know that all of us juniors had testing that morning. Then when I came home I got my gifts. I got an alarm clock, since I could never have enough during high school. (I think I got it to replace the old terrible brown one I used, but I still used the old one anyway.) I got some Peeps pumpkins that came with black frosting gel so that you could put your own faces on the pumpkins; the flavor of the gel on the marshmallow wasn't good. I got two CDs, The Best of the Monkees and As Seen on TV: Halloween Specials. I wanted to listen to the Addams Family theme on the Halloween CD. I was dismayed to discover it wasn't the original recording; my mom and sister said it sounded the same to them. I took a nap while listening to my new Monkees CD. I think that night I played the song "Listen to the Band" for my mom because it didn't sound like the Monkees; it was very much a country song.

2004. My parents presented me with the first season of The Munsters on DVD. I excitedly went downstairs with my Mexican chocolate cake and mint chocolate chip ice cream to watch the color pilot episode. I was surprised to find their makeup was blue instead of green. When they cut to the shot of "Phoebe" (the precursor to Lily), I proclaimed, "It's Morticia!" That night I had mutual; I think we were doing stuff for the salt drive. I remember standing by a pumpkin display at Dick's Marketplace with Brad Byington and Kelton Gubler. I said that I was going to go home and watch The Munsters; Brad didn't know what it was. We were talking about Bryson Pope. Kelton said Bryson said he was the Spanish adjective "forte" (fuerte), meaning strong, but Kelton said he was the French version, meaning loud. I didn't think he got the foreign words quite right. I remember talking with Austin Anderson about how I was taking French; he seemed to think taking French was unwise. When he dropped me off, I said, "Merci beaucoup," and in response he said "Merci beau[raspberry]."

2003. This might have been the day we had the climbing wall during gym class; I couldn't climb. When I returned to the locker room, I discovered that someone had stolen my binder, which really stressed me out. But it meant that that night I didn't have to do homework because I didn't have my binder. We had Papa John's for dinner and I was presented with gifts. I got a Spongebob deck of cards (supposedly from Allie, since she didn't have much money as a two-month-old) and the DVD of Rescue from Gilligan's Island, which we went downstairs and watched. I remember thinking that all of the characters looked like caricatures of themselves, since the actors had all aged.

2002. I remember my parents giving me Halloween M&Ms and erasable gel pens, one of which was red.

2001. My parents gave me The Nightmare Before Christmas on DVD; I was intrigued by the special features it had. Later that night my sister and I think my cousin Angie and one of her roommates came over. Susanne hadn't bought me anything, so my mom let her give me the Beverly Hillbillies DVDs she was going to give me for Christmas.

2000. One of the sixth grade teachers, Mrs. Fisher, took us outside to find protozoa. She put a beaker in a standing bucket of water and there was a creature inside. I said, "It's a little fish!" I thought it was going to be the best birthday ever, that I would find a protozoan, but I didn't. That evening I went with my brother and mom and my friend David Christensen and another friend (I think Cory Sheley) to a theater to see Chicken Run. I remember talking about how in class we learned about protists (I pronounced the o like /a/ instead of /o/) and my mom and brother corrected my pronunciation. On the way we had a discussion about the chicken and the egg. David Christensen said, "I've finally figured that out," and explained that the chicken came first because God created the chicken in the Garden of Eden, but my brother David asked him how he knew God didn't create the egg in the Garden. After the movie, David Christensen came to my house for a sleepover. We were playing the Super Nintendo and I brought down my National Geographic Children's Atlas of the World and I showed him that it had the Salt Lake Temple in it. If it was Cory Sheley who was the other friend, I think we drove him home.

1999. I remember taking my new Moy Mushroom Vegetable Friend to school and pointing out to my friend Brad Rogers that the tag had a typo: "Please remove tag before giving to you child." Brad said it could be pronounced "to you, child." After school I got the rest of the Vegetable Friends.

1998. I remember my dad saying I was a decade old. I think that morning I got gifts of Halloween and Thanksgiving window clings. That night, my sister came home from work and presented me with the Pierre Onion of the Veggie Friend Seedies from Around the World. Then my brother came in my room and gave me cash and told me he would take me to Winegar's the next day to get another Veggie Friend Seedie. He told me it was good he hadn't bought it because he probably would have bought the onion.

1997. I was wearing my green shirt with the orange Nike Swoosh on it. My teacher gave me a cupcake while I sat in the special birthday chair. I think at that point I was still getting my birthday presents the night before, so I didn't get presents on my birthday.

1996. My birthday was a Sunday. We had lasagna and red baked potatoes for dinner, as was my request. Everyone commented to me that I wanted red potatoes but I didn't eat any. Apparently I wasn't in the mood for potatoes. We had apple pie for dessert.

1995. It was a rainy day. I remember my mom picking me up from my grandparents', where I had spent the day because I was sick. She had a wrapped gift for me, which surprised me because usually only our Christmas presents were wrapped. It was a thing you build and put marbles down.

1994. I think my mom came to my kindergarten class and distributed little paperback books to the class. There were three kinds of books: Duck Tales, Sleeping Beauty, and I think Cinderella. I got all three but everyone in the class only got one (Duck Tales for the boys and the others for the girls).

1993. I remember blowing the candles out on my cake in the morning. Then it was time for me to go to the Christensens' house. I was in the backyard playing on their swingset when David came out. It was the first time we had met. I told him I was five and he told me he was four. Later there were a bunch of neighbor kids, including Kennie Christiansen, there for a birthday party for me. I got a Winnie the Pooh Goldenbook. I got scented crayons and huge glitter crayons and probably some coloring books. I don't remember what else I got.