Of Birthdays and Pirates
Avast ye maties! It be International Talk Like a Pirate day! A most glorious day when ye might get a free donut if ye go to the right place dressed as a pirate! Or so I’ve heard. It be also the day I be celebrating me birth. A happy coincidence indeed! Okay, I’m definitely not going to be typing like that this whole time, so if I haven’t scared you off already, I promise, that’s the last of it. Probably. But yes! It is indeed Talk Like a Pirate day and I have indeed heard you can get free Krispy Kream donuts if you go in dressed as a pirate. That was a couple years ago and I’m not sure if they still do it, but there you have it.
There is part of me, that is hesitant to make a birthday post, considering I wrote about my birthday last year and all the same information still applies, but I can’t imagine any of you remember all that information or are going to go back and compare with my last birthday post and also, it’s my birthday, I’ll do what I want. Within reason. Let’s not get crazy. Anyway, it seems a little wrong not to write about my birthday when I’m writing on my birthday, so this is what you’re getting.
I want to think it was my freshmen year of high school when I discovered my birthday was on International Talk Like a Pirate day. I was probably doing some roleplay online with a friend and looking for stock pictures to use for characters when I came across an image informing me that September 19th was International Talk Like a Pirate day. It changed my life, by which I mean I now have a fun face to spout about my birthday to make myself seem interesting. But really! It is a fun and convenient theme for a birthday. My roommates took advantage of that my senior year of college when they sent me on a pirate treasure hunt for my 22nd birthday. Sure, the walking out on a window sill to get one of the clues was a bit much, but the boat making and the booty was fun, even if I did leave it in BFCaT afterward. There’s a snack food of some puffy foam texture variety that’s called “Pirates Booty” and I have no idea where they found it. The like three pieces I had were pretty good, but I don’t remember anything about it.
You know how some people are really good at birthdays and others just have awful luck with them? I tended to be the awful luck kind until I met my husband. Everything apparently got better when I met him, go figure. Seriously, though, I have lots of bad birthday memories growing up. I was super sick one year, another year I crashed my first car the day before, my birthday parties were always disappointing and somehow sad, so I gave up on those. Then again there was the Ren Fair my 18th birthday which was actually quite fun, despite getting lost in Ohio of all places on the way down. Anyway, then I met my husband and I got better, mostly. I did manage to break my phone yesterday, which I’m going to attribute to a need to break something significant every couple of years on that day. Luckily it was just the screen and I’m due for a new phone anyway, so it’ll be fine.
The thing about getting married, is you get more people to celebrate with. So somehow my in-laws have magically nabbed my actual birthday for celebration. Today I’m going out to lunch with my mom-in-law and her aunts, as we do every month, and then we’re hanging out together for the day before going out for my birthday this evening. So now I just have to find time to celebrate with my husband and with my family. We did go out last Friday, and I really should have asked if that counted. But we didn’t say that counted, so I don’t know that it should. But we will be doing birthday soup in October, so there is that. If we weren’t so ridiculously busy all the time this would be much easier.
Birthday soup, by the way, is the best thing ever. I know I told you about this last year, but it really is the best. My family was super into the Little Bear books when we were young and in one of the stories Little Bear decides that because no one is around for his birthday he’ll make birthday soup, and so he does. His friends arrive one by one and contribute to the soup and in the end he finds out they were all there to celebrate with him anyway and his mama made cake. It’s a good time. So we decided as a family that we should make birthday soup. Since my sister and I have birthdays two weeks apart we generally just split the difference and celebrate together somewhere in the middle. We’re a little to her side this year, and by that I mean like three days past her birthday, but whatever. We make homemade wedding soup every year and it is the best thing ever.
So, if you have nothing better to do, or even if you do, you should consider dressing up like a pirate today and maybe asking the internet if anywhere near you does any fun piratey things today. Because who doesn’t want to be a pirate for a day? Not for life, though, that was kind of a sucky job. Terribly health plan, no dental. However, we can all enjoy talking like a pirate for the five minutes we think about it today and then not again for the rest of the year. Here’s hoping ye have a grand Internation Talk Like a Pirate day, maties!
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