Happy Birthday song can be embarrassing

Marjorie Anderson

EDMOND — Ah, yes, it’s June — the month of blossoming flowers and tweeting birds; the aroma of newly mown grass and whatever the neighbors are barbecuing on their backyard grill. It’s the month of teeth-aching Edy’s like-homemade ice cream from the frozen food section; of itchy sweat rivulets and skeeter bites, and of the black armband I wear in commemoration of yet another birthday.

When I’m asked which birthday currently afflicts me and it’s to my advantage, I turn the numbers around and claim to be dyslexic. That’s not going to work next year, but neither has it ever actually worked before. Monday’s child — which I’ll explain later — might once have been fair of face, but gravity has taken its toll.

The splotches, sags and wrinkles used to bother me, but I’m feeling much better now that I’ve given up all hope. In fact, at this stage I’m euphoric over every year I attain. But that doesn’t mean I want to stand while the entire birthday song is sung in my behalf. It’s embarrassing. Especially when you come to “Happy birthday, dear mumble-mumble, happy birthday to you.”

“And many more” is the part I value these days, so here’s my proposition: Leave it at that and I won’t have to be offended when you can’t remember my name.

It was different back in my primary Sunday school days. Then it was an honor to sit in a crepe-paper-wrapped chair on a platform while my fellow Munchkins sang the birthday song and I dropped my pennies into a little-wooden-church bank.

That little bank couldn’t hold all the pennies I’d have to drop in today. Even if it could, the church parking lot would be empty before the last penny fell. So just keep it to “And many more,” OK?

I’ve welcomed those words ever since a lawyer who was settling an uncle’s estate suggested I wouldn’t likely be seeing many more birthdays. Specifically, he admonished me in writing to “be mindful of the provisions for determining the recipients of your shares if you die before final distribution.”

How would you translate that? I had to lie down for awhile. He either figured the estate thing was going to drag on for a very long time or else he thought I wouldn’t. Thanks, lawyer, for casting a pall over the quality of however many birthdays I might have left.

But now I’m thinking, Humph! If there’s an expiration date stamped on the bottom of my foot, it wasn’t there to begin with. I have my original birth certificate. The ink prints reveal the sole wrinkles of a newborn’s feet, none of which remotely resemble a date.

The fine print on that certificate does reveal most of my inception date, though: June 4, 19—. I can’t make out the rest of the numbers, but I can tell you that I was born in the wee hours of a dark and stormy Monday morning.

That might seem promising if you believe the nursery rhyme that claims — as I mentioned earlier — “Monday’s child is fair of face,” but no one in my family did. Crying faces are not fair faces, and I cried pretty much non-stop until Dad traded the cow, whose milk I couldn’t keep down, for a goat whose milk I could.

But I digress. Back to my various birthday issues, I think we now understand each other regarding the Happy Birthday song, but we haven’t yet dealt with the surprise birthday party. Don’t do it. If you must, then surprise me before 8 p.m. while I still have my teeth in my mouth.



MARJORIE ANDERSON is an Edmond resident.