You Say It’s My Birthday

Well, today I turned 46 years old, and compared to my 5th birthday, this is probably one of the most grim ones I have lived through yet.

The girls at the office here arranged for me to have the pizza of my choosing (Canadian bacon and sauerkraut) and a cake with my name misspelled at 11:30, after which I headed out to the alley to have a cigarette.

I was conceived on a bed, under a pile of coats, at a New Year’s Eve party in the early 60’s somewhere, I have been told, which isn’t an abhorrent concept to me. I can remember the days when I actually had a sex drive. It just seems to me that celebrating one’s birthday after the age of 26 or so is similar to whooping and hollering over a plastic container of moldy leftovers from three months ago that was hiding in the back of the refrigerator.

In the past couple of years, I have had to employ the use of reading glasses, blood pressure medication, denture adhesive, laxatives, and other prosthetic products just to get through the day.

I have a few choice responses to my friends and family who actually still ask me, “what do you want for your birthday?”

I usually respond with “a quick, painless death”. The days of my whole world turning bright and sunny over the G.I. Joe helicopter are long gone. Even later in life, one could expect at least going out to dinner, but every time I eat anything these days, it is just a reminder that I am that many bites closer to cancer or heart disease. I haven’t reached the point yet where my life has been severely changed due to an actual heart attack, so I continue to smoke like a train and exist on a steady diet of grease, sugar, and cable television.

From the view here in my brooding tower, I see very little to be positive about this season. As a vile, rabid, unrepentant liberal, I am bracing for the gutless Democrats to get thoroughly kicked in the junk a few weeks from now – much like the nerdy kid on his way home from school does after trying to joke, bargain,or plead for the bullies to leave his face and notebook in tact, only to have them kicked to the ground with a fervent and hardy laugh.

I have absolutely no health insurance now, and I don’t see any hope of anything resembling health care in my future unless it comes in the form of a casket. I seem to remember the archetypal criminal in cartoons wearing a cheap party mask, black and white striped shirt – poking his gun into the belly of some poor sap saying “your money or your life!” Unfortunately, the powers that be have reduced many of us to the sap with the gun in his belly and the billionaire CEO’s of insurance companies with their finger on the trigger.

I saw a story of a family who’s house was left to burn because they failed to pay their municipal fire department an additional $75.00 fee (on top of the taxes allotted for the service). No – seriously! The truck even rolled into the neighborhood because the flames had spread to a neighbor’s house who HAD paid the $75.00 fee, but they left the poor sap’s house to literally burn to the ground.

This took place in Tennessee, and without being too Andy Kauffman about this, I think that there is a certain mindset that can actually buy into a sort of pay-as-you-go government that is often praised by right-wing puffer fish turds, at their own peril mind you.

Back to the birthday – People have also been asking “so what are you doing tonight to celebrate?”

That’s easy – I have to head up to the store and pay my electric bill, pick up some buns for sloppy joes, make dinner, watch some news, roll a couple packs of cigarettes and then try to get some sleep before the alarm goes off tomorrow.

There is a glimmer of hope though – The younger generations seem to be a very patient and forgiving people. I hope they can stay that way because if I ever do end up in the rest home someday, they will surely have to be of that nature, and have one Hell of a sense of humor or I will be truly doomed.