Listen to Jim’s podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/
or read his tale below:
HAPPY UNBIRTHDAY TO YOU AND ME
What do I get each time another birthday rolls around?
What is my reward? Where is my gift?
More to the point, what makes me think I have a reward coming my way, each time another 365 days pass me by?
What is so significant about our birthdays, mine and your’n? (Don’t let “your’n” throw you–it’s just one of those middle English words that a bookie nerd like me finds swimming among the silt in my brain.)
Speaking of silt, how many hundreds of songs are indelibly branded into my memory?
This is definitely one of them:
MARCH HARE:
A very merry unbirthday to me
MAD HATTER:
To who?
MARCH HARE:
To me
MAD HATTER:
Oh you!
MARCH HARE:
A very merry unbirthday to you
MAD HATTER:
Who me?
MARCH HARE:
Yes, you!
MAD HATTER:
Oh, me!
MARCH HARE:
Let’s all congratulate us with another cup of tea
A very merry unbirthday to you!
MAD HATTER:
Now, statistics prove, prove that you’ve one birthday
MARCH HARE:
Imagine, just one birthday every year
MAD HATTER:
Ah, but there are three hundred and sixty four unbirthdays!
MARCH HARE:
Precisely why we’re gathered here to cheer
BOTH:
A very merry unbirthday to you, to you
ALICE:
To me?
MAD HATTER:
To you!
BOTH:
A very merry unbirthday
ALICE:
For me?
MARCH HARE:
For you!
MAD HATTER:
Now blow the candle out my dear
And make your wish come true
BOTH:
A merry merry unbirthday to you!
***
Now, why is it that I can’t remember where I placed my Diet Coke five minutes ago, but I can recall hundreds of songs like this from my ever present childhood?
Don’t strain yourself—I don’t really need to know the answer to this question. I just want to ruminate and contemplate and masticate…eating my breakfast and thinking useless but entertaining thoughts all the while.
Go ahead and laugh at me. It’s a life I’m stuck with.
And during the best of my times, I celebrate at least 364 times a year.
Quick! Let’s appreciate and savor our unbirthdays with gusto, now and then distracting ourselves with the delusion that all is right with the world.
We do deserve a break from all this now and then, don’t you think?
Lewis Carroll and Jack Kerouac and Aldous Huxley and Steve Martin all know the value of self-delusion. Each has a different way of celebrating silliness.
My way is to share random thoughts and allow you to find your own significance or distraction as a result.
Couldn’t hurt.
Precisely why we’re gathered here to cheer
© Jim Reed 2017 A.D.