And I'm back!

Today is my 29th birthday. 29 - yikes! A friend from college wrote a blog post about the age of 29 that I found to be so true and hilarious. I think her post perfectly sums up why the age of 29 is somewhat of a quandary.

In high school I made a pretty big deal about my birthday complete with a countdown to remind all my friends how many days they had until they could celebrate me. Looking back now in my wisdom as a 29 year-old I realize this sounds extremely narcissistic. But at the time I honestly think I just enjoyed any reason to celebrate anything. Thankfully I have always been blessed with wonderful friends so they didn't get too annoyed (I think). For my 18th birthday they took the opportunity to make sure everyone in the entire school was aware of the blessed day. Travel back with me to that day...

November 3, 1998: I wake up, get ready for the day and then head outside to get in my car and that's when I see them. My 1993 Mitsubishi Eclipse (affectionately known as Mitsi) is covered in small pieces of paper donning my high school crush's face. 'My friends are so funny!' I thought sarcastically. I spend the next several minutes removing the papers from my car before driving to school.

When I do enter the school I see that my sweet friends have painted happy birthday signs on butcher paper and hung them in different hallways! I love the signs and decide that maybe I can forgive them for the incident with Mitsi. I make my way to my locker and see that someone has taped up this Titanic Poster of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet dancing with one slight alteration - my face was taped over Kate's. If you'll remember 1998 was the height of the Titanic phase which also happened to coincide with the height of my Leonardo DiCaprio obsession phase. Again a nice gesture and since I didn't even know what photoshop was in the late 90's taping my face to a poster was definitely the next best thing.

I walk to class, and wait - what's that I see people wearing? Oh Lordy, my "sweet" friends have passed out the tiny pieces of paper with my crush's face on them and people are wearing them as pins on their clothing. People I don't even know. Unbelievable. I get to class and see more papers with his face on them all over my chair and hear the laughter of my friends as my face turns bright red. Admittedly, this whole scenario isn't quite as bad as it could have been however because my crush was older than me so he thankfully had graduated and therefore was not completely freaked out that someone was semi-stalking him (at least as far as I know).

I'd say the memories of that birthday are right up there with the "Backwards" party I had in elementary school. Everyone wore their clothes backwards to the party and we did an obstacle course in the front yard backwards. For the record I still think this is a genius idea for a birthday party - try wearing your clothes backwards for a while and you'll see how fun it is too...okay so maybe it's more fun if you are under the age of 10.