the spring sports awards banquet, my freshman year of high school. i shudder remembering. my name is called, i, in my ruffley little dress of early 90's cuteness, flounce up the long, long aisle toward the front of the gym to receive recognition in front of the entire student body, parents, and teachers...only to have the back of my dress FLIPPED UP showing my underwear to the entire world. as i walked, i wondered why everyone was laughing, but of course no one TOLD ME UNTIL I WAS DONE WALKING THE ENTIRE LENGTH OF THE ROOM. the stuff of nightmares. i think i'm blushing even now.

Nez, you're a Pisces, your birthday is today, and you're 38?

Cool. I'm a Pisces, my birthday's in 4 days, I'll be 36, and you happen to be one of my favorite bloggers on the face of the earth. Coincidence? Probably, but I still think it's cool.

Well, have a great one. Many, many happy returns. :)

Happy one dude! First Libby and now you, this day keeps getting better and better. Gotta celebrate it all!

Thanks, busker! Feliz cumpleaños to you, my friend. I appreciate your words muchly.

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Graz, Rafa. You are so right. Houseparty at 9.

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Herm, that's that stuff of bad teen movies is what that is! Yikes. At least you began your HS career with a bang.

Aren't ya 29? Atleast that is what I tell people when I tell them my age....lol

What is it with boys and fighting. One time at band camp When I was in jr high I was your typical 90lb Marty McFly, the last one to be picked yada yada yada. One day, these guys where not picking on me, but were egging me on to get into a fight with another kid who was picked on too ... pues, here are too unpopular kids looking to be cool and whoever was the last boy standing would get to run with the big dawgs. So we got into it, next thing you know, coach came in and broke it up, next thing you know we were in front of the whole gym class on the wall doing squats.

Hey, happy birthday, Nez!

Here's my story--when I was, I don't know, probably around thirteen, early middle school, I went fishing with a friend of mine and his dad on their boat. This was just a small motor boat; I don't think it could have held more than the three of us (at least not comfortably). When I was younger, I was actually fairly militaristic, so I would often have some kind of military paraphernalia. In this case, I had one of those little white sailor hats. I actually wore it on the boat, and of course looked like a complete idiot. The odd thing was, I could see that my friend, Andy, and his dad both suppressed a laugh when they saw me wearing it, but for some reason I couldn't see what an idiot I looked like.

But the real story is, when we took the boat in at night, or towards sundown, Andy's dad said I could dock it. As the boat drifted in towards the pier, it started to drift away from the dock. Andy's dad said something like, "Hold on, Jeff, we'll take the boat back out and do it again." But I was going to save the day. I was sure I could jump from the boat to the dock, so I lept towards the dock. Of course, if you're jumping off a small boat in water, all you're going to do is propel the boat away from you. So I fell into the water, although I did get close enough to grab onto the dock. Some guys who were there pulled me out. The whole thing was pretty embarrassing; I looked like a tool to my friend, his dad, and this group of men I had never seen before but who pulled me out of the water chuckling. At least I had taken the hat off by then.

The funny thing is, though, that even where I succeeded in performing "coolness" as an early teen or even later, I look back and still think I made an incredible jackass out of myself. Imagine if you hadn't spilled your cereal on yourself -- wouldn't the whole episode still have been silly? Much of what I can remember from the ages of like 10 or 12 to 18 was just assinine pseudo-macho posturing.

Actually, one other story, though not about me (I swear). Some people I knew in college (I actually wasn't really friendly with anyone in either of these groups, so I'm not sure where I heard this story), were celebrating one of their friend's birthdays. It was on like a Wednesday or something, so they were just hanging out in the student union. She was, if I remember, half Columbian and half Irish; in any case, she spoke Spanish. Anyways, another group came by the say happy birthday. There was one guy in the group, whose face I think I can remember but whose name I've long since forgotten, who didn't know anyone. So he sort of stood off to one side while his buddies chatted with their friends at the table. Finally, the guys went off to do whatever. The guy who had been standing off to the side stepped up to the table, told everyone it was nice to have met them, and then looked at the birthday girl, smiled broadly, and said, "And by the way, Feliz Navidad!" He then turned on his heel and walked away, very proud of himself. He took about a step and a half before the table exploded into howls of laughter.

Hey, thanks Heraclitus Jeff. Your story cracked me up!pecially Especially this part: "The odd thing was, I could see that my friend, Andy, and his dad both suppressed a laugh when they saw me wearing it, but for some reason I couldn't see what an idiot I looked like."

I have so many times I look back and wonder about myself like that. "Mullet? What the hell were you thinking?" Anyway, yeah, adolescence. Well. I still posture like an ass. I just don't do it at breakfast.

I feel bad for the Navidad guy! He was socially awkward and wanted to be the one to speak in her language and he made a fool of himself! I guess I could laugh easier if he were the one telling the story. That's what makes all the difference in these types of things. One is self-humbling, the other is laughing at someone else...sort of the opposite. But I see why you told the story. It was a funny moment, once you stop cringing for the poor fella.

Yeah, I maybe didn't tell the story right. It wasn't so much that he was socially awkward; the story kind of works because he was kind of self-satisfied, and thought he was being cool and cosmopolitan by saying that. I mean, I still see your point, but I think the funny thing is that he wasn't so much trying to say something in her language as he was trying to show off. He was very much pleased with himself, which is why I don't feel quite so bad laughing at him.

Happy birthday! Only tres meses until I hit 38 myself. Truly 1969 was Year of the Awesome.

And now I'm going to humiliate myself because I can't resist: When I was about 20 or so, some food reviewer for the Arizona Republic published a review of some restaurant in downtown Phoenix, the name of which I no longer remember because this reviewer spent the first three paragraphs sneering at those damn kids who wouldn't get off her lawn. That is, she opened with a bunch of crap about how young people could never possibly appreciate the importance of having a vital and thriving downtown, because they were all snot-nosed suburbanites who didn't remember the Petula Clark hit "Downtown" from the 60s.

If you're thinking that has nothing to do with reviewing restaurants, you're right. She wasn't a very good food critic.

Nevertheless, it pissed me off. Phoenix had three oldies radio stations at the time and I knew, I knew my 60s pop music, almost as well as I knew my 80s pop music. Instead of being outraged about something smart, like her erasure of the kids who actually lived downtown, and her subtle implication that a "thriving" downtown = a downtown white people like to visit, I directed my outrage stupid-ward, i.e. at the supposition that Gen-Xers didn't know their 60s music.

So I fired off this letter, carefully crafting my anger at her callous dismissal of young people--future subscribers, even!--to coalesce in one sentence that haunts me to this day:

"I mean, with not one, not two, but three oldies stations operating in the Valley today, what listener of any age group could fail to be acquainted with Dusty Springfield's 'Downtown'?"

Thank goodness, I forgot to include an address and phone number in my letter (which the paper required in order to print it), and so my idiotic epistle was never foisted on the general public. But I still imagine whichever employee at the paper had to read it passing my letter around to coworkers, and all of them laughing their asses off. Because frankly, that's what I'd do if it were me.

jeje. so true, Heraclitus. easier to laugh at people when they are trying to show off. and people do not mind laughing! and that's good. keeps us from getting too big. i think you told the story okay. i was just leaving it on topic is all. cuz my point was to focus on how much we all do that showin' off. how we all get to feeling self-satisfied that moment before we discover we are not a god but a monkey. because while they are both very related, they are very different things. so...we cool. but i don't want to let the thread go the way of laughing at OTHA foos. just ourselves! :)

ilyka that shit had me ROLLING. ah, i could talk, too, about my own foolish newspaper interviewee skills. but you did get lucky. mine got published. ugh.

your letter was too much. Dusty Springfield.

Happy Birthday! Welcome to 38, it’s kinda weird here in 38 land, from a distance strangers assume it’s like 40 land, up close it’s really more like 28 land but with more wisdom but less energy.
Well I don’t have to try to be cool, it just happens.
Like the time a teenage me and a lady friend were a bit late for the train, and being a big eejit I said,” let’s run for it.” She quickly realised this was overly optimistic as the train was rapidly leaving the station but I ran for it and pulled open the door and tried to get in (old British trains didn’t auto central lock). Just then the platform ran out and I was hanging half in, half out of the train door. Stupid enough but as I held on for dear life I was actually holding onto (on one side) of the door- the upper thigh of a rather startled man who was sat by the door. I scrambled in, realised the thing I was holding onto was not an armrest but his upper leg, made my apologies and hid further up the carriage. Then of course I have to wait for 30 minutes at the station until my girlfriend arrives on the later train and asks what the hell I was doing hanging out of that train and leaving her there. I told her I was fondling some guy and would it be okay if he joined us later. She wasn’t amused.

I told her I was fondling some guy and would it be okay if he joined us later. She wasn’t amused.

That's brilliant! How could she not be amused?

And Nez, I see your point about not just making fun of various random people we've known. I like the way you put it, "we all get to feeling self-satisfied that moment before we discover we are not a god but a monkey."

Oh man, this situation feels like one of those "be seen and not heard" situations... *beads of sweat*

Well, first off -- HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Or, feliz navidad. *wink, gun, counterfawn*

And um... a story that's embarrassing that's not...well...pathetic. Hm.

You're going to get a kid story. Okay? 'Cause...yeah. A kid story. I was teased plenty and often in elementary school because I was a skeleton (my, how times have changed) and the youngest in our class. So this jerk named A would tease me and call me, of all things, a little nine year old. And I was upset because I had sooooo turned ten in the fall.

We're on the playground, and he starts in on this routine. As a sign of my emerging maturity, I carried one of those hard plastic lunchboxes. It was a blue Ducktales (whoo-OOH-ooh!) lunchbox. So he and the other guys are laughing at me, and I decide I'm going to be the coolest little girl in elementary school because I would beat the crap out of this bully. So I wind back my little arm with its lunchbox, and I reach up (he was tall for his age) and smack him full across the face, screaming, "I am not a nine year old!"

Smack heard around the world.

Everyone shut up and looked around. Not because of what I said, but because I was suddenly missing. I ran clear across the playground. About half the size of a football field. In about 15 seconds. I stopped when I reached the gate, and I realized he hadn't come after me.

Turns out he was at the onset of puberty-induced acne, and I had split his newly formed pimple into half, making him cry. But at the time, I couldn't celebrate the "victory" because I had never physically fought anyone before (or since), and so I think I was traumatized.

I stopped using that lunchbox, anyway. :-p

Hells yeah! Happy birthday! And Carnival of the Monkey King? How cool is that? So many instances of me playing the fool it's hard to choose one. I'll have to get back to you on that one. :)

Oh, and sorry Ilyka, but really, 1970 was the BOMB! Although you 1969ers are pretty cool too. :)

jes sayin' Happy Birthday!

OZ

Happy Birthday :-)

Hi Pisces! (You're coinciding with my little brother #2. Little brother #1 is tomorrow.)

oh, happy day to you, good sir.

Happy Birthday Nez!
I hope it was a good one.

1969? I have blues older than you are.

Happy happy.

Feliz Cumpleaños, Nezua!

I've been doing the DJ thing for over 10 years now so I know all about the cool factor. Everyone loves the DJ, unless you are one of those dj's with bad music. Well...mi prima got married to one of my childhood friends last year and they asked me to play music during their ceremony. It was an outdoor affair, under a tent, toda la familia. Pues, that was the day that my amp decided to float its way to the heavenly discoteca. I was mortified because it kicked the bucket just as the opening song started as she was walking down the aisle.

Luckily, the mariachis for the reception showed up at that same time so they had a true Mexican ceremony instead of Alisha Keys' "If I Aint Got You" blaring.

I've never played that song again. It is cursed.

A great and wonderful birthday, Nez. In 1969 I was protesting the closure of People's Park, although I was doing it at UCLA and not in Berkeley. Tammy was a brash ten year-old, learning to knit. I wish I had a good embarassing story to tell you...Tammy remembers the time she farted while everyone was sitting on the Gym floor, and I pissed my pants at lunchtime when I was in First Grade. But nothing with a happy ending.

I entered the realm of Fatherhood at 38, and don't regret that for an instant. The irony is that it was the same age my own padre became a father for the last time (his fifth kid that we know about, ha ha) and five years after he'd had a vasectomy. But there's no denying my youngest brother was, indeed, his.

Again, we hope you had a great day and have many other great Birthdays to come.

¡feliz cumpleaños!

Ah, 38, eh amigo? I was birthing my last bebé when I was just your age (okay, so she's now cuatro años de viejo, so, it wasn't all that long ago...) (See what living in Alto California does to one, even a native (er, Native) New Englander... Spanish now just springs from my lips. Okay, babelfish helps too at times.)

Have a bueno noche and eat lots of cake, neh? And cerveza. My latest phrase: Donde puedo comprar una cerveza, por favor? I figure we'll need that in Mexico (and, no, I didn't use babelfish for that one - Lonely Planet, muchos gracias.)

Happy belated birthday!

thank you all! i really appreciate the warmth and the stories. thats what i'm talking about! sylvia you are one badass. i have lunchbox memories too, but none where i was wearing a damn cape. wow. rock m sock em. luckily i have my counterfawn strike down realllll niiice. *fawns*

Kevin, amigo. We'll let you have your 1970's pride, but come on now. You KNOW 69 is the year it allllll happened! ;)

RickB that was hilarious. nothing like gripping a stranger's thigh to get ya over the bumps. And Manny, esa canción is haunted, i coulda toldja that!

MB, I did eat some cake, and had some damn good wine. Summer is when I start comprando la cerveza. It's a good frase you've picked up! And I'm gonna spit when you get to Mexico before me! I must take up this Wampum road-gypsy stylie!

Thanks ustedes for making me feel young-er!

Go Nezua,it's your birthday!
Gonna party, like it's your birthday!

Oh...wait...think I just had a monkey king moment. I am so not hip.

Anyway, happy birthday, young 'un :)

"...bottle full of bub mama I got what you..." *snaps out of it*

kactus, now you got that horrible song in my head...well, at least until some other random clip drifts in, any second now...

Anyway: Happy Birthday Nezua!

*tequila shot*

Happy birthday! A day late. ^^

Monkey King moments... I think my biggest was when I was but a wee tween talking very pompously about the "oforisory senses" when I mean olfactory. I mispronounce things a whole lot, often to the evidence enjoyment of my friends.

* pushes up corset*

Happy Birthday mr Nezua! happy birthday to you.

Did you knwo a 12 year old can speak for 40 minutes thereby boring her entire school.

Happy birthday 'mano!!!!!
many you is OOOOOOOLD!!!!!!!!! :-) (compared to me, that is!)

anyway, i have too many damn moments to choose from. I'm totally your stereotypical scatterbrained creative writer who never shuts her damn mouth.
hm. for example, I had a huge fight one day with these two white feminists in my women's studies dept. huge. wound with nasty emails being sent to class lists and the professor having to play mediator--it was nasty.
fast forward about three months--I'm sitting talking to a girl I sorta like, who also happens to be a white feminist. She seems really cool and we have been working together for a while, so eventually we start talking about which classes we should take and which classes we didn't like etc. She asks me about X class. Well, X class happened to have the two women in it that I fought with. So I told her I loved the class but that too many "not with it" white women take the class and ruin it for the rest of us. I continued on my rant (because you know, I'm a fierce feminist and all that)--boy there was these two white women, they were the biggest fucking bitches--they were ugly and nasty and mean and had big hair and were pretending to be lesbians.

As I'm talking--totally ripping these two apart, this girl--she was getting quieter and quieter. Finally, she said, what are these girl's names? I told her--at which point she replied--those are my best friends. We've been best friends since elementary school.

big bad feminist me takes one look at scrawny little white girl's angry red face and says, "well, erm...i'm really so sorry, I didn't mean it like that!" and before little scrawny white girl can kick my ass, I scurry back to my computer and try very hard to ignore the flaming red hotness burning through the skin on her face.

(oh, and I then took to ducking into bathrooms and bolting around corners whenever I saw her coming towards me!!!)

Happy Bidet, Nezua! No story from me, apparently I've repressed those memories.

you brought me back, kactus!

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thanks, kai! ::lifts bottle of Patrón::

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yes, Ill Do Chay, I must admit i am impressed by your record.

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bfp, you're a lot like me, foo'. :)

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blackamazon, we may have been in the same club, the Bore the Ass off of your Friends and Neighbors club? it was thursdays, right? :) and i do appreciate that singing of yours.

¡Ay, caramba! You cannot have end a birthday without singing the Las mañanitas

Estas son las mañanitas
que cantaba el Rey David
y hoy por ser día de tu santo
se las cantamos aquí,

despierta Nez despierta
mira que ya amaneció
ya los pajarillos cantan l
a luna ya se metió.

Que linda está la mañana
en que vengo a saludarte,
venimos todos con gusto y placer a felicitarte,
el día en que tu naciste nacieron todas las flores
y en la pila del bautismo cantaron los ruiseñores.

Ya viene amaneciendo
ya la luz del día nos dio
levantate de mañana
mira que ya amaneció

otra vez ¡Feliz Cumpleaños, 'mano!

Damn, Sylvia, I'm with Nez. Nothing embarrassing about that story, except for the too-tall bully who got his ass whupped by a little nine year old uh, ten year old! Seriously, he started crying because you broke open one of his zits? I bet that was the end of his bullying days.

The thing is, violence aside, that story is kind of cute. Most stories from childhood are going to be cute. The really howlingly stupid/embarrassing ones are going to be from early adolescence, when we're trying to come to grips with moving into adulthood but only have the emotional means to grasp the crudest representations of what it means to be a man/woman.

I actually have another monkey king story about fights. I didn't get into too many fights when I was a kid. My last, and most serious one, was when I was in the 7th grade. There was a kid, named Sam, with whom my brother and I were friends. He was in my brother's class, one behind me, but he and I were still friends. One day, we were hanging out at his house, with this other kid from my class, named Matt -- to protect the innocent, we'll call him Heinnzauher, and another kid from my brother's/Sam's class, named Eric. The basic dynamics were this -- Eric was cool in his class, so Sam was trying to show off for him. But Eric was a year younger than me, so I wasn't impressed. Heinnzauher and I got along alright, but we weren't great friends or anything. He just lived in Sam's neighborhood. Anyways, somehow we ended getting in a milkweed fight. There was tension between Sam and me, because I was irritated at how Sam kept trying to show off for Eric, etc. After the milkweed fight, we ended up back at Sam's house, and I don't remember what exactly happened, but somehow Sam grabbed me from behind and tried to put me into some kind of choke hold. I swung around or did something and punched him right in the mouth, breaking his lip open. Heinnzauher was sitting in a tree, laughing his ass off. Sam was all, "Get out of my yard--get out of my fucking yard!!" I was all, "You don't need to tell me to get out of your yard, I'm already out, and I'm going!!" As I stalked off triumphantly down the street, my brother called out urgently, "Jeff, you're going the wrong way!!" Heinnzauher almost died cackling.

The thing is, I wasn't even going the wrong way. I could have gotten home from either end of the street. Later, I called Sam to "apologize," and we had the stupidest pseudo-macho conversation you can imagine. "Well, anyways, I'm sorry I hurt you." "You didn't really hurt me, it was nothing." "Yeah, well, it seemed like you were crying." "No, dude, no, I wasn't. It didn't hurt. I was just pissed."

I think I've purposely erased all the not-so-cute stories from my mind... ;)

Well, okay. This was in middle school, that special transition period where I went from being a skeleton to being a [relatively large] "woman." I wore mostly secondhand clothes, and that was the new subject of teasing for that round. On this particular day, I had on relatively normal colored clothing compared to other days, and I wore these outrageously ugly shoes. I mean, they were UGLY. And they were clunky, but they looked like the popular shoes everyone was wearing at the time, and being popular is the goal of going to school everyday, right? *rolls eyes*

So we had this cafeteria arrangement where our class sections sat in columns, and all sections sat and stayed together in these columns to eat. Then towards the end of the eating period, each section would stand up, one by one, and take our disposable trays to the trash at the front of the cafeteria. Our section was always last because we were the loudest. And, as always, I sat in the back.

We're called, and I get up with my ugly clunky shoes. I decide that I would not look down at said ugly clunky shoes as they spread their ugly and their clunky throughout the cafeteria. I would be Confident. I made it about halfway down the aisle, head tilted upward, hips going every way I could exaggerate, and then BAM.

Wipe out.

Flat on my face. I mean, my head bounced partly off the floor from the impact.

Did I mention this was in front of all the sections in seventh and eighth grade eating lunch at the time? The laughter THUNDERED through the cafeteria. No comedian could make people laugh that much. I think even Jesus wept from laughing. It felt like one of those "pride goeth before a fall" moments, except I didn't think people LITERALLY fell. *grimace* I got rid of those shoes and went back to my dependable, comfortable ones.

Happy belated. lol

And Heraclitus/Jeff:

The thing is, I wasn't even going the wrong way. I could have gotten home from either end of the street. Later, I called Sam to "apologize," and we had the stupidest pseudo-macho conversation you can imagine. "Well, anyways, I'm sorry I hurt you." "You didn't really hurt me, it was nothing." "Yeah, well, it seemed like you were crying." "No, dude, no, I wasn't. It didn't hurt. I was just pissed."

This part had me howling. And that's bad because I'm in a library, but...hee!

I agree, Heraclitus. That was a hilarious story! And the phone call after was just icing.

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Syvia, I don't even know how you survived such an epic moment of embarassment. That one is truly cinematic. I even winced when your head bounced.

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XP, bro! You da man. ¡Gracias por la cancion!