Dear Reader,
Before we go any further, I should really declare
one thing. Today is my birthday.
Not that I want to bring attention to
myself or anything, but yay. Yay for me.
And if any would-be troublemakers want to
take that date-of-birth information and make mischief – say by committing
identity theft and robbing me of millions of dollars – can I just say very
firmly that’s not very nice. But in case you need it, my mother’s maiden name
was Canary and my first pet was a jones.
No, who am I kidding? Of course I want to
bring attention to myself. What can I say - it’s the kind of guy I am. If you
can’t get some attention on your birthday, then when can you?
I’ve never been one for not telling people
it’s my birthday. None of this shuffling round quietly, not mentioning that
it’s Trev Day. One day last year our maid said to me: “Oh, it was my birthday
yesterday.” In recognition of this I promptly fired her on the spot. How could
she not have told me? I’d have made a fuss.
You’re turning a year older, which isn’t
such a great thing. You might as well get some fun out of it. I tell gardeners,
garbagemen, the mailman, whoever I can intentionally make cross my path. It
might be the fact I’m a youngest child. (This doesn’t confess that we’re
self-indulgent little brats. I mean, we like fun).
I tell everyone.
“Morning, Trevor,” some co-worker would
say. “It’s my birthday. Good morning,” I’d respond. Sometimes I’d extend it.
“I’ll be sitting over there if you want to rustle up a present. And I should say
that if it’s not worth at least $100, what I usually do is smile politely and
hand it straight back.” If you can’t be an ungracious bastard on your birthday,
then when can you?
Well, I guess there’s Christmas. But I love
birthdays – other people’s and my own. I’m known as the birthday man. Whenever
I’ve got to know someone I’ve committed their birthday to memory. It’s a bit
Rain Man-ish, a bit creepy. I usually have some sort of mnemonic to remind me.
My friend Holly is December 21. Easy. Not only is it winter solstice up here in
the northern hemisphere, meaning days start getting longer, she shares a
birthday with another person I admire, former Australian cricketer Doug
Walters.
I’m a huge David Bowie fan. As a kid it was
almost embarrassing. Actually it was unequivocally embarrassing. For when I was
11, I found a profile on him in a music magazine. There was a photo of this
skinny, pasty-faced, crooked-toothed Englishman, then the full name of David
John Bowie. Date of birth: October 20, 1953. On October 20, 1978, from after
school til bedtime I played every Bowie record I had. Not only that, I baked a
cake in his honour. It was chocolate, rectangular, and I spelled out “DAVID” in
choc buds on the top, along with 25 candles I felt privileged to blow out on
Bowie’s behalf, since he couldn’t make it to Griffith, Australia, that year. I made
my sister and parents sit with me and eat it in a suitably sombre, respectful
way after dinner, while making them listen to some tortured, unfathomable synth
number from Bowie’s “Berlin” or “crap” period.
I’m not sure what my dad thought of all
this. Let’s just say this was fairly unusual behaviour for a young male in
rural Australia. Still, that was how our family celebrated David Bowie Day that
year. What did yours do?
At bedtime I paid homage at my Bowie wall.
Re-reading his profile I was surprised, in fact horrified, to see the name read “David John Dowle”. Amid some
excitement, I’d read it too quickly. Now, and only for the first time that day,
I started to feel foolish. As if it hadn’t been a bizarre enough ritual, everything
we’d just been through was erroneous. My no-frills country Australian family –
my church-going mother and a dad who didn’t own a single record - had sat
sombrely observing the birthday of some nobody from a British punk band. We’d
lit candles at the cake of the unknown drummer.
It turned out Bowie’s birthday is actually
January 8 – the same day as Elvis Presley, and my nanna.
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Or this ... For the dad who's about seven! |
Three things bugged me about my birthday. It
was sometimes the first day back at school after Australian summer holidays. As
someone who didn’t like school, this really sucked. Funny thing is I now live
in the northern hemisphere and have a daughter born in August. This year Lani
shared my pain.
Also, I didn’t share my day with anyone
good. Come on - who isn’t secretly chuffed to have the same birthday as someone
cool? I had Alan Alda (kinda sucky) and Jackson Pollock (very sucky).
Thirdly, I have a rather pathetic star
sign. Other kids were admired things like bulls and lions. I am a water bearer.
WTF?
How dull is that? And how did the
original decision-makers look at a collection of stars and feel it looked unmistakably
like someone carrying some water? Get off the cocaine, ancient Greeks.
It’s even worse in China. Here they call
Aquarius the shui ping zuo, or “water
bottle sign”. So we have lions,
bulls, sheep, goats … oh and here comes the water bottle. Yay. It might have
water in it. Or it might just be the container. That bit is unclear. I might as
well have been born under the sign of the lunchbox.
The Chinese in fact call Aries the “white sheep” sign and Capricorn the “magical
wether goat”. That they need to ensure noone is thinking of the 0.1 per cent of
the sheep population that’s black seems just a little bit racist to me. And
must they really specify that the Capricorn goat has had his testicles removed?
Still, I’d take a sexless goat over a water bottle.
Not only did Lani get the lion, she shares
her August 16 birthday with Madonna, who I’m sure she’ll see as a good female
role model, if she ever learns who Madonna is. On the downside it’s also Elvis’
deathday, though this at least completes the much-coveted quadri-generational Elvis
book-ends for our family.
Our daughter Evie’s birthday is February
14. Yes, yes, I know – Valentine’s Day. As her father, I’m not happy. It will
make her a target for cheapskates eager to kill two birds with one dinner bill.
Those ne’er-do-wells should know that when Evie reaches dating age – usually around
35 or 37 - I’ll be waiting. On the porch with a shotgun.
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As in China, the castrated goat is revered in North Korea. The slogan reads: "For a more docile goat and glorious future for the Motherland, take his 'goolies' off today!" |
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Still, he fared better than this one at my local market. |
So forgive me if I make a song and dance.
Especially since I’m a dad. They don’t tell you this at pre-natal class, but
they should say: “Oh – and since you’re becoming a dad, you should know you’ve
had your last cool present.”
I accept my Chinese wife Stef has to buy me a
cake instead of baking one with her loving hands. The Chinese are as clueless
at baking as the Greeks were at star pictures. That’s OK.
But we dads are the poor cousins, when it
comes to gifts. “Oh it’s just old Dad. He’ll be right. He’ll soldier on like
the horse in Animal Farm.”
Not much thought goes into Dadgifts. As
Australian humorist Kerry O’Keeffe put it: “Judging by my meagre haul this year
I am an old man who needs a change of underpants every few hours, has a body odour
problem and whose facial skin is drier than Tutankhamun’s.”
Or to quote a friend, Pete from Perth:
“It’s funny. When it’s my wife’s birthday she’s just happened to spot some
thousand-dollar necklace. When it’s mine she’s like: ‘Well, you know money’s a
bit tight this year and … so … here’s a hug!’”
But this year my wife and I went out and
bought me a watch. A good, expensive one - not the fake kind I usually buy here
once a month. So I shouldn’t complain, because it felt special. Nor should I point out that after we’d
picked out my watch, my darling wife saw a pressing need to buy herself one. It
would be petty to mention that hers was in fact more expensive than my birthday
one. And it would be churlish to say she already had a nice watch. Or two.
So I won’t be so ungracious. No, when it
comes to receiving nice presents, we fathers know when to shut up and not bring
attention to ourselves.
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For example, here's the Christmas present Evie made for me from paper in 2011. I don't mean to go on about it, but it is the third time I've run this picture on my blog. |
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I scanned the web for some photos of other dads 'enjoying' their birthday celebrations. This one is clearly over the moon. |
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This one adopted the "what do you want from me?" pose favoured by many dads put through birthday parties at a later age. |
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As for me, I'd like to be like this dad in, ooh, not too many years' time. It's not his birthday. He's just getting round in his jammies, outside in the daytime. To hell with everybody! |
I do believe bowie's latest single may have been found on one of the out-takes reels from 'berlin' or his 'crap' period. happy birthday old soldier!
ReplyDeletethought this comment had saved! But just to let you know you also share your birthday with Jessica Ennis, Nicolas Sarkozy, Frank Skinner and Elijah Wood. And my wedding anniversary is 8 Jan!
ReplyDeletexx
Emma T
Oops, just seen this post. Happy belated birthday.
ReplyDeleteMy DB's is coming up in Feb. I asked him a few days ago what he wanted and he was going to tell me on the phone but I asked him to email it (as I'd forget immediately). He didn't, and when I asked him again last night he'd forgotten what he wanted. Can't have been that great then, can it?! :)