This Always Happens on My Birthday

Friday, February 3, 2012

5:55 AM.
“Mama! I told you to wake up before me!”
Groan. OLeif sent him back to bed for another half-hour. About half an hour later…
“Why is it taking so long?”
Collette sat him at the breakfast table with a glass of water.
“Look at those rainclouds,” he said, watching out the window. “All of them waiting for the son of the deaf [death]… I’m just kidding.”
He downed half has water…
“Everything is God’s. And if everything wasn’t God’s, everything would turn to dust.”
Puck could be heard later in the hall talking to OLeif…
“Is Gally the name of the Milky Way?”

The rain was still out in Kansas City. But it was coming. Mom was suggesting a cardboard fort for Puck’s birthday.
“I used to have one of those,” Linnea said. “Those break so easily.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Francis jumped on it.”
Mom and Puck spent part of the morning looking through the Oriental Trading Company catalog together for the fun of it. Chocolate coins in shiny green foil. Self-adhesive rhinestones. Chinese lanterns. Squishy Earth balls… anything a four and three-quarters kid could want to browse in a catalog.
As Dad emerged from another run, Joe knocked out a couple punches on his shoulder.
“You need a problem?” Dad laughed.
“Looks like I already have one,” Joe retorted, throwing out a few more. “Oh yeah? Want a taste of this meat packet?”
Dad just laughed and retreated to the basement while Joe brought in a Puck-sized box for the young man to play with. A large piece of styrofoam accompanied the box which Joe tossed into the air, hooked on the fan blade, and shattered a small red glass heart swinging from a shelf on the wall.
“Oops.”
Mom didn’t mind much, and commented on the cold temperature of the room while Joe swept up the mess.
“I don’t know how you’re wearing shorts right now,” Collette told him.
He was also in a t-shirt and bare feet.
“What?” he replied. “I’ve trained my body to create fever.”

It was already noon.
Carrie rigged some spaghetti mixed with left over sausages. She started Puck on his first course of fresh-cut apple, blueberries, mango, and pineapple.
“Dad!”
– She whisked away a back of Ghirardelli chocolate chips. –
“You’re not supposed to eat those! They’re for a recipe! You guys are always eating everything I’m saving for recipes!”
“Well, you’re a friendly person today,” Dad retorted with smile line. “I think I’ll go back downstairs now.”
“Good!”
Between work and merit badge review preparations, Francis got busy whittling the little pearly red fish out of one of Puck’s bouncy balls, trying to convince Puck that he had once been, if not a star, at least “space junk”.

Joe drove off to meet Wally for a possible hike, despite the impending rain, which once again seemed to have split into two branches. One to the north and one to the south.
Meanwhile, Collette was helping Francis work through his Environmental Science checklist. This included conducting an experiment of the effects of changes in the environment on creatures…
“Well, I stepped on an anthill…”
An experiment on the effects of air pollution…
“He lights smoke bombs in the backyard,” said Linnea.
And the effects of acid rain…
“Well, my plan was to pour toilet bowl cleaner on some plants…”
Hopeless.
Then Francis got busy messing around with Puck by reclining in his personal box…
“Pull him up by his head!” Linnea prodded Puck. “Yank his ears up!… Francis, this is not ‘Pin the Tail on the Puck’.”

A quick visit to Walgreen’s for B6 vitamins for Collette.
Back at the house it was lightly raining, Puck was watching My Side of the Mountain (because of the rain), and Carrie made scones.
So with the boys still gone and Dad, Mom, Carrie-Bri, and Linnea-Irish departing with Puck to babysit him back home, later to include Francis… it might have been the first time since high school that Collette was alone at the house, with just the animals… until Joe walked in the door nine minutes later.
Magnus arrived at the front door by seven and joined Collette and Joe onto a highway blistering with curtains of rain after a drop by Magnus’ car for Blokus…
“Almost lost the greens!” he declared, popping back into the pilot’s seat.
And then proceeded the completely expected and inexplicable, yet totally explicable, endless banter of Joe and Magnus doing what they did best. This included about a 73% slot time of impressions of themselves and other acquaintances, celebrities, and imaginary characters. This may or may not have included notations about Toyota salesmen sporting Superman belt buckles and bumper stickers reading “Follow me to the Gay Bar”. And complaints about traffic due to a stalled tractor-trailer after I-170…
“Oh!” Magnus mock-whined. “This always happens on my birthday!”

They were going to celebrate Magnus’ birthday one week early. He was slotted to turn 23 on the 11th. And, per his own request, the gang was intended to dine at Seamus McDaniel’s Pub shortly after 7:30, which turned into after eight.
After arriving in the continued partial downpour, Joe morse-code-styled his ultra-beam flashlight up to Rose’s apartment from the other side of the street, signaling to let them in. In greeting, she kicked Joe upon entering the front door. Madeline was being equally civil in her welcome by sniffing Magnus’ shoes and scramming if anyone tried to pet her.
“Oh!” Magnus groaned. “This always happens on my birthday! Your cat hates me!”
When they reconvened at the Fit a quarter of an hour later, Joe had forgotten the keys. Four of them waited in the rain while Rose retrieved them.
“Oh!” Magnus sobbed. “This always happens on my birthday!… My eyes are throwing up tears!”
Down a few blocks to the pub, trying to find a place to park while Rose barked out orders of where to turn… It was a little crowded on Tamm.
“Oh!” Magnus wailed. “This always happens on my birthday!”
And finally a brief walk to the pub itself, an Irish-green-painted-tin-ceiling affair where the countdown to St. Patrick’s Day glowed in neon boarding at the front desk, that included enormous burgers, of which Collette consumed 3/8th. BBQ for Joe, Provolone for Collette (St. Louis style), and Cheddar for OLeif. Magnus and Rose each ordered equally monster-sized baskets of nachos with real cheese dip. Rose mentioned something about her eye doctor telling her she had “low quality tears”. And Magnus penciled sketches onto his corn chips.
As they departed, a little lightening split the air.

Back at Rose’s apartment, she had opened the windows to the night air, still falling heavily with rain.
“Let me check all my texts,” said Magnus perusing the screen of his phone. “Aw. No texts. This always happens on my birthday!”
There was some cackling down the hall a few moments later…
“No laughing in my bathroom!” Rose ordered.
Magnus emerged shortly later, still laughing…
“OLeif just sent me a text: ‘Happy Birthday!’ while I was in there!”
Then Joe ordered a round of nice things to be said about Magnus, which included a mock toast delivered from himself. Of course Rose’s comment was something only a Rose could give…
“I like your Gold-Toe socks. It shows you have class.”
Magnus did have to agree.
Rose had bought the “cool” apple juice. Rounded hand-sized glass bottles of pristine golden apple juice…
“I got junky apple juice and non-junky apple juice,” she explained.
Magnus was impressed…
“This makes me feel… powerful,” he said, gripping the little globe.
And then the six boxes of Cheez-Its. There had been some miscalculating. That didn’t even include the other two OLeif had left at home because they weren’t the 5-Grain flavor, as requested.
So Joe proceeded to fall asleep on the couch snuggled up with Madeline while the other four punched out two rounds of Blokus at the table. And the rain continued to fall up through their eleven o’clock departure and well into the early hours of the morning.