Unplugged & Unmedicated

Another Year Older (A Classic ShinySpeak from the jokelist on 8/11/00)
Written by David M. Muench


My birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, and this shiny-headed freak will turn the big "31". Okay, so it's not quite that big (Oh, yeah. I'll never get tired of hearing that one), but it's one year older than "30". Come to think of it, "31" is a really lame age. Nothing really changes. It's not like turning "21", the age I could go out to different clubs (Including those of the "strip" variety) and experience the wonders of legal inebriation and real live breasteses bouncing to and fro. I'm not kidding, I was like a kid lost in Toys R' Us. I felt like I had received the Gold Ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. It was Euphoria. "21" was good. "31"; nothing.

"Hey Shiny, how old are you now?"

"Why, I am 31 years-old."

"Oh."

No enthusiasm there. Just blatant ennui. It's like showing your friends a slide show of your vacation to a small town famous for its Custard Pies and the Nation's largest ear wax ball. Not that spectacular.
With a birthday comes the famous question that arises prior to said birthday:

"What do you want for your birthday?"

"Ten billion dollars, a supermodel wife, twelve beach homes across the world, a -- "

"...that we can reasonably afford without bringing unwanted attention from every law enforcement agency in North America."

"Oh, well, you don't have to get me anything."

When does that start? One day we're happily composing three-page essays of various gift ideas, and then one year we say "Oh, well, you don't have to get me anything." I don't remember when it even happened. It was like I experienced a memory lapse or coma -- no recollection of the entire gift transformation. Then they will reply: "Well, you better tell me or else you might get something you don't want." It's like they're threatening me on my birthday. Are they gonna have Cousin Luigi fit me for a pair of cement shoes and a nice swim in a nearby lake if I don't tell them what I want?
Granted, there is some veracity to them "getting me something I don't want." One Christmas my mother felt it was absolutely necessary to give me a classic black western shirt covered with several mulit-colored neon cacti. I have yet to wear it.

Cousin Luigi couldn't even force me to wear it.