On Birthdays and Dams...

Today is my birthday (at the risk of revealing personal information that could result in identity theft or other heinous scary things that I can’t even imagine but will hear about via the media eventually because they are out to scare the shit out of every American until we are so tired of being scared that apathy really sets in and we throw our collective media devices and Katie Couric into the Boston Harbor…)

I’m halfway to 68 and I don’t care who knows it. It’s all relative anyway. I’m the Goldilocks of aging. At work, I’m about the only female who still menstruates so people naturally don’t take me seriously. In Mazatlan, like 4 years ago, I felt like a fat dinosaur. Among my friends, I feel just right…Sophisticated and wise and yet young enough to appreciate sarcasm.

These be the good old days ~ Ziggy Marley

Today I’m at work and my perfunctory birthday card (signed by everyone whether they know me or not, with a variety of the same statements everyone makes on every office birthday card, “Have a Good One. Best Wishes. You’re Sweet. Enjoy Yourself,” and of course, “Happy Birthday” ad nauseam) is displayed prominently over my flat screen. I’m touched. I wasn’t sure there were enough emails about whose birthdays are in October that they’d remember. Them’s good people.

My co-workers also pitched in to get me a little travel kit involving soaps. This is a thoughtful gift (even if somebody did bring it home from a hotel in Wisconsin, didn’t use it and decided to pass it to me). It’s the thought that counts; and think they did, because I’m on my way to Vegas, baby, tomorrow afternoon and could use a variety of soaps; especially exfoliating soaps. There’s no such thing as too much soap, I always say.

You have to say Vegas baby, when you talk about going there. It just feels good. Not “Las Vegas,” or “Vegas,” but “Vegas comma baby.” I have only visited Vegas as a child and frankly I confuse those memories with those of Reno. Somewhere in there are hamburgers and a cheap stuffed monkey named Fred, won at Circus Circus; along with trying to figure out where kids were allowed and not allowed. I vaguely see myself positioned just outside a velvet rope watching my mother on the opposite side of the rope at a nickel slot machine.

The most vivid childhood memory of Vegas specifically, baby, is not Vegas itself but Hoover Dam; and not the Dam itself but the argument my parents had about whether to go on the damn tour of the Dam. This monumental parental event took place in a Winnebago in front of my step-brother, myself and our wiener dog, Gretchen.

Essentially my mom is scared of heights, enclosed spaces, turbines and anything involving fun and adventure (or so it seemed to my young self, sitting in the RV hoping with all my might that I might get to go into that incredible edifice and understand the dynamics of hydroelectric power…or at least ride a really cool elevator…whatever). Essentially my dad is scared of doing anything without my mom, so when Mom decided she would not participate and would “be fine here in the motor home, reading with the dog…” my dad’s thoughtful response was, “well then, none of us will go.” What followed is relatively blurry but involved lots of huffing, circular reasoning, passive aggressive statements, martyrdom, and most significantly my mom saying “Fuck” in front of us for the first time.

I, of course, burst into tears. Who was this woman?? I didn’t even know her anymore. I didn’t know whose side to be on. Hers, because she said she wanted to stay behind and would be ok if we went ahead… or his, because even though she said this, it could have just been code for “I’m only saying I’ll be fine and that you can go ahead but really I don’t want you to go but I’m going to pretend like it’s ok and make you all feel really guilty anyway.” Or hers, because she really didn’t care if we went our not and would have been fine but my dad is a stubborn fart who’d rather ruin everybody’s fun than just go see the stupid thing without my mother. In the end, none of us went any farther into the dam than the bathroom at the visitor center.

Truly, it made no sense to me at the time. And though I’m still perplexed by the actual nature of the disagreement or the logic on either side of it, I can’t hold it against them because I’ve had more than my fair share of ridiculous arguments with my spouse. Plus, it’s a really fun memory to rehash and never let them live down and it brought the word “fuck” into the family. It’s fodder for years of ribbing and cussing.

So, Vegas, baby. The strip, the food, the drink, the shows, the Dam… I’m on my way tomorrow and not looking back. Hedonism take me away. Happy fucking birrrthdayyyy tooo meeeeee…..