My Favorite Birthdays

“I like my birthdays every one” goes an old Primary song. My birthday is fun, and every year something different and exciting happens. Some year it gets celebrated quietly with little notice. Other times there’s lots of fanfare, friends, and cake. These are some brief recollections on some of my favorite past birthdays. In other words, here’s a highlight reel of the last twenty-four birthdays I’ve had.

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My Tenth Birthday:

I was in fourth grade. My dad came to lunch, which was great because I always thought it was cool when someone else’s parents came to do lunch with my classmates. That day my class was having a reading points party, and there was pizza and root beer and (after dad left) some root beer chugging. Ahhh, the innocence of youth.

My Twelfth birthday:

Turning twelve is a big deal in the LDS church because that’s when boys get the Aaronic priesthood and girls advance to Young Women’s. So to mark the day when I hoped my life would begin, my parents let me invite over three of my school friends. We had a big bonfire in the corral of my family’s barn (yes, we have a barn), and then the usual cake and presents inside. I got a new diary and The Road to El Dorado on VHS.

NASA

My Fifteenth Birthday

I was already in high school, and I was older and sadder than I’d been when I was twelve. I didn’t do anything big for the celebration that year. But the night that I was celebrating with my family, we heard on the news that the International Space Station was supposed to fly over the area. I went outside by myself to watch it. I spent two minutes looking up wide-eyed at a very fast-moving light crossing the sky.

My Sixteenth Birthday

Sixteen. Drivers’ License. Old enough to date. Neither of those things really mattered at the time of my birthday. But I did hear in the local newspaper that one of the middle schools was putting on a performance of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. My mom got tickets and we picked up two of my friends from Young Womens’--turns out they knew some of the cast so they enjoyed the show, too. And then it was back to my house to sleep over. I was having a pretty miserable year at school--hence the move to Arizona the following year--but my birthday was definitely a highlight.

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My Seventeenth Birthday

This was probably one of my best birthdays ever. If not THE best. That was the year I was living in Arizona. I had a party on Friday night, invited tons of girls from the neighborhood but only three showed up, but that was okay because I was tight with all of them. We played Spoons in my grandma’s big living room and we got pretty violent, like, throwing the spoons across the room violent. Sunday was my actual birthday. It snowed a little bit, but not enough to cover the ground, but it was great to actually get some kind of snow for my birthday. I got a huge chocolate cake that I decorated with chocolate chips to spell 17 and my birthday dinner was barbecue chicken and my aunt’s twice-baked potatoes. But the best part? Monday in my history class, my classmates whipped a gigantic cupcake out of nowhere with lit candles and sang to me. I was touched. I’d been a total stranger when I’d moved in that August, but by December I was cool enough that they’d sing to me for my birthday.

My Eighteenth Birthday

Probably my most underrated birthday. I got to register to vote. I asked my mom to make me a cake shaped like an elephant because I had my heart set on joining the Republican party (LOL). That weekend, I picked up my friends Katrina and Linda and we went to see Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, which IMO is a very underrated movie. Then I drove them all the way back to my house for cake and we played ninja on our back porch. And then Dad and I drove my friends all the way back to town. Worth it.

Sporcle

My Nineteenth Birthday

The worst thing about having a birthday in December is that when you’re in college or living in a college town, you have to take finals on or around your birthday. Well, I was a freshman at BYU and for all intents and purposes I was having the time of my life so it wasn’t a big deal. On my birthday, I took my finals for Book of Mormon and Geology 101 because they were both subjects I liked and fairly easy exams. When I got home, a couple of guys in my ward serenaded me with the birthday song from The Emperor’s New Groove.

My Twentieth Birthday

I was already starting to show signs of depression. Flipping out when I realized that I had a final scheduled for my birthday should have been a red flag. But for some reason I’d gotten it into my head that between a scheduled final and work in the evening I didn’t have any right to celebrate my birthday at all, even on a different day. My roommates, thankfully, talked me out of that mindset. The morning of my birthday, they made a big breakfast for all of us, hash browns and eggs. Then when I got home from work, a group of my friends from the BYU Medieval Club came by my apartment to serenade me and bring me treats. I was told later that the look on my face when I saw my friends at the door was one of pure joy. Knowing that my friends really cared about me and that I loved them in return got me through the hell that was the next four months when my OCD was trying to twist me into thinking that it wasn’t true. And you know, that’s the kind of joy I’m looking for to this day.

My Twenty-second birthday

My twenty-second was a quieter birthday. The day before, me and two of my roommates went to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert--this was the 2013 concert I mentioned last week that I enjoyed SO MUCH. John Rhys-Davies and Deborah Voight were the guest artists. My roommates and I decided that Voight was a diva, coming out on stage in a bright red gown and belting out “The Twelve Days After Christmas” with some real attitude (in all seriousness, though, a great performance). On the day of, my singles ward decided to take a trip to the Draper Temple. It was my second time doing baptisms there, but this time it was only me and a couple other people from my ward in the baptistry that night. For some reason I was outside waiting for a long time in the cold for the rest of my group, so I made a call to both of my grandmas to pass the time. When I finally got in the car to leave Draper, my ward friends couldn’t help singing “Twenty-two” by Taylor Swift when I told them how old I was turning. We made a stop at Nicoitalia Pizzaria in Provo for dinner.

My Twenty-fourth Birthday

There were marshmallow stormtroopers. I took three friends to see Star Wars. I died--just kidding I didn’t die but spoiler alert Han Solo died and it was more devastating than I thought it would be. I am seriously looking forward to next year because the midnight release for Episode VIII will be on my birthday. For more on what actually happened at the party check out this article I wrote for The Geeky Mormon:  http://thegeekymormon.com/the-perfect-star-wars-party/

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