Why Old People Don’t Like Birthdays

As a child of the 1960s, I often wondered what my life would be like in the year 2000. I know I would be 40 for most of that magical year, but, other than that, the possibilities were endless. I, like most kids dreaming of the future, imagined Jetson-like cars soaring overhead, robots and computers serving humanity, wearing suits that would make Ace Frehley jealous, space travel for the masses (with at least one lunar base) and public relations with some alien race. I myself would be a tall man with a well-trimmed beard and flowing dark brown hair. As of last week, I officially became one year short of the half-century mark. Now, well into the 21st Century, I am a ‘big and tall’ man with flowing grey hair and a beard that reminds anyone over the 7th grade of ‘The Big Lebowski’ and under the 7th grade as Santa Claus. The only thing soaring over my head are gas prices for the still earth-bound cars, humanity serves the computer, no lunar bases, only a select group of rurals who CLAIM contact with aliens and Ace Frehley now dresses like me. A tradition in my family is that the birthday boy or girl gets to pick the restaurant where we celebrate. My son hasn’t gone beyond McDonald’s. My daughter likes a local ritzy spot called the Market Place that gives away a free dessert called a ‘Chocolate Mess’ (basically a tall glass covered in fudge with vanilla ice cream, whipped topping and a lit candle). My wife also liked this place, but I imagine would prefer a couple of other ritzier joints in town that serve wine with no kids. Me…I go for the Japanese hibachi. I like the personal surroundings as the master chef literally plays with our food, creating huge bursts of flame from the sautéed onions, slicing and dicing our meal with expert dexterity. …at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. We filed our way into a spacious eatery named for the famous dormant volcano that most people envision when they hear the name of Japan. We entered over a bridge spanning an indoor waterfall and stream filled with large orange and white koi that looked like goldfish on steroids. To the left were a set of tables for those not intent on the hibachi experience, while on the right was a sushi bar with a few patrons enjoying the nutritional benefits of raw fish and the sharp tang of wasabi. If you’ve never tried wasabi, it is a green concoction that makes horseradish taste like mayonnaise in comparison. As a comparison, at a wedding once, I accidentally put an enormous slab of what I thought was mayonnaise onto a cracker. I spent the next ten minutes trying to claw my brain out through my forehead. We were first informed that this was a members-only restaurant (being in a dry county, establishments that serve alcohol must be registered as ‘private clubs’), so we dutifully paid the membership fee and made our way to the chef’s table, where we then had to wait until the area around the hibachi (or cooking surface) was filled. Apparently, the chef doesn’t play to a partially packed house. We made our orders. I noticed an item called ‘Sukiyaki Steak’ and asked for it. I was familiar with the song ‘Sukiyaki’ from many years ago, the first in a foreign language that reached the top of the American music charts. I also knew the word itself had nothing to do with the song. It was placed there by a stateside producer so the American audience would recognize it. Before I describe our hostess, I want to emphasize first and foremost I have the utmost respect for Japan, its people and its culture. Their traditional music is melodic and serene, the realm of theatre, especially Noh and Kabuki, is awash with originality and pageantry and the Shinto faith is a religion of honor, love and peace of mind. Despite being bitter enemies in my parents’ day, the ability of the people to rise from the atomic ashes to take their place as a world power mere decades later stand as a testament to the enduring spirit of the Land of the Rising Sun. Having said that, our hostess was a cross between a Stepford Wife and Mrs. Roboto. She had a face that seemed to be surgically fixed in a permanent smile, reminding me of the character of Joo Dee, the ever-agreeable tour guide of Ba Sing Se in the cartoon series ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’, only not as personable. A request by my daughter for a glass of apple juice was met with the curt ‘One serving only’. Smile. My son ordered chicken strips from the kids menu. ‘We don’t cook that at station. We bring to you’ she replied. Smile. My wife asked for boiled rice instead of fried. ‘I bring to you later’ she said. Smile. A frequent patron sat next to me and wondered if the red-hatted chef would work at our table, which made me turn to notice the three or four chefs did, in fact, all wear different colored hats. The patron said the one in red was notorious for setting bonfires in the dining hall. Thankfully, once the area was filled by another family, our cook, wearing a yellow hat, rolled his wares to our spot. ‘Hellloooo, how are youuuuu? Heh heh heh! We’re gonna make some goooood fooood tonight. Heh heh heh’, he said in a voice that made me fidget in my seat and the womenfolk squirm. I’m almost positive that, in his native language and among his fellow countrymen, he is a bright, hard-working young man intent on making each meal the most enjoyable and delectable. When using English in his shtick, however, he emanated a personality that college professors would call ‘spooky’. Even if he wasn’t wearing the red hat, he must have placed second in the ‘Commit Arson in Your Own Workplace’ competition. Within minutes, the metal surface heated up and a quick spraying of cooking oil and a liquid I could only guess was nitroglycerin was squirted on and ignited. I noticed out of the corner of my eye the patron next to me moving his chair back rather quickly. I did the same. The rest were caught in the heat and blinding flash of the fireball. The chef then placed a couple of eggs on the grill, spinning them around and balancing them deftly on his spatula before breaking them and chopping them up. Then, without warning, he said to my wife, ‘Ooookay, catch’ and flipped a blob of egg at her face. I think the idea was for her to catch it in her mouth. Instead, it bounced off her right cheek onto the floor. The kids, of course, wanted their chance and met the same fate. I was adept with tossing the occasional movie popcorn, so I had a little more success, with only a stray strand lodging in my right eye. In short order, the vegetables, shrimp, chicken and beef were on the grill, spreading a mouth-watering aroma around the dining area. This was quickly quashed by the addition of some heavy syrupy substance that I could only guess would be the famed ‘sukiyaki sauce’. It all but blanketed the smell of the steak and veggies, which were then shoveled onto my plate. Lesson learned. My son had already received his chicken strips and wolfed them down, only to now be forced to sit and watch as the rest of us got our All-Star produced meal, so he sat, head bowed, as we began eating. I felt exceedingly sorry for the little guy, as did his sister and mother, who all cast sideward glances as we dropped a spoonful of our meals onto his now-empty plate. Throughout all this, the chef asked my wife at least three times ‘No friiieed rice for youuuu, right?’, to which she replied in the affirmative. Still, after he had concluded his routine and carted his ensemble away, she had not received her rice. She brought this up to the robo-hostess who came to check on us. ‘I have not yet received my boiled rice’, my wife said. ‘You sure?’, the hostess asked. Smile. ‘Yes’, my wife said. Five minutes later, the hostess came back with a small bowl of white rice. ‘Sorry’, she said. Smile. We left in a hurry once the bill was settled. No tip. I apologized to my family for the ordeal they endured at my expense. Next year, we’re trying the Gyro place downtown near the bank. Hopa!

The Cat-Hater (and the Cats who love her)

Look carefully...this is a photo that, by all rights, should never have been taken. The serene look on her face...the hand gently brushing the fur of the animal on her lap, purring in its pleasure like a well-tuned motorboat. What you're seeing is as close to a miracle as I've ever experienced. There is apparently no single animal on earth that instills as much love or hate among human beings as the cat. Famous cat lovers include Sir Winston Churchill, Muhammed (who once cut off a sleeve of his shirt to avoid waking a sleeping cat), Ernest Hemingway, Sir Isaac Newton, Raymond Chandler (whose cat reportedly doubled as an editor by sitting on his manuscripts), Florence Nightingale and a host of others, including myself (not famous, mind you, but a cat lover). There were just as many on the other side of the fence. President Dwight Eisenhower and composer Johannes Brahms took great pleasure in killing, or having killed, cats from their homes (the composer of the great Lullaby was rather adept at a bow-and-arrow in this endeavor). Noah Webster was not kind in his appraisal of cats in his dictionary, calling them a "deceitful animal and when enraged, extremely spiteful." Napoleon Bonaparte was once found sweating and on the verge of a nervous breakdown over the sight of a small kitten. Add my wife to this latter group. Growing up with three brother and a plethora of dogs in her childhood, she became quite acclimated with their playfulness and loyalty. (that's the dogs I'm talking about, not her siblings). Her reaction to cats was another matter. I don't know what occurred in her past that gave my Best Beloved such an intense case of ailurophobia. Simply put, she has no use for them and was more than likely to use a foot as a hand when getting said creatures out of her way. (Okay, a retraction...my wife would NEVER intentionally put the boots to any living thing, except maybe me, but only because I can fight back). I knew this when I married her, but like cat-loather James Boswell and his famous subject, cat-lover Dr. Samuel Johnson, we mostly kept our opinions to ourselves. In the early years of our union, the subject of pets never materialized because we were simply too busy as DINKs (Double Income, No Kids) to lend time for a muzzle to feed. It never occurred to us that other people in our close-knit family unit would ever have a say. Sure enough, within a decade our beautiful children came into the debate. Once our kids reached the age of reason, pets became an ongoing part of our daily conversation. We 'experimented' with a Siamese fish named Wally for about six months till it died and we tearfully buried it in in the back yard. Pets of the four-legged variety were not at the top of our list. My daughter was jumped by an overzealous retriever in the first grade and, hence, did not trust dogs any further than she could throw them. My son, who is asthmatic, cringes at anything on four or more legs that took the even most remote passing interest in him and shedding. A recent family reunion did quite a bit, however, to further discussion. My kids spend the better part of an evening in the same house with several dogs and cats, a number of which were of the long-haired variety. Both came away with nary a sniffle. A close family friend of ours have children in the same age group with at least two dogs. Both our kids have slowly dropped their guard faced with the overt friendliness of the pair. Mom, however, remained steadfast in her stand that while the discussions will go on, no cats will be involved. Ever! That was, until the arrival of Felix.

Felix is a yellow-eyed black cat...the kind one avoids on Friday the 13th and, sadly, falls prey to the more demonic components of the human population around Halloween.

He found his way into the neighborhood over the past summer with two others...'Dude', an overweight, green-eyed black cat with white fur on his chest and feet, much like the famous 'Socks' of the Clinton administration, and 'Kramer', a blue-eyed Siamese of equal girth.

While it appeared his compatriots were getting their daily requirement, Felix was definitely not in the 'well-fed' category.

He eventually made (read: crawled) his way to our lives in the heat of July and August. He would make his way through the neighborhood scrimping and scrounging for anything that was the least bit palatable. This included roaches (or 'water bugs' as our Terminix man calls them) and the occasional lizard. Within a week of his presence, my wife responded in a way I had not thought possible for her. Not with a swift boot to the backside or even a restraining order.

She personally went out and bought a bag of Friskies and a pet bowl.

She confided to me that, as much as she hated cats, she couldn't stand by and let Felix starve. I found this a side to my wife I had not seen before. Sure, she had always been on the front lines when it comes to compassion for those less fortunate, but this was a new one on me. As much as she detested the creatures that walk by themselves, as Rudyard Kipling famously wrote, she refused to let this cat suffer.

Soon the children became enraptured by this new-found friend, who in turn allowed them to pet him and, through the discovery of a simple shoelace, play with him. This became a good thing...the kids weren't stuck playing video games, as was the norm, but were engaged in active play with an active pet. This fact was not lost on the Mrs., who continued to supply the cat with '9 Lives', 'Purina Cat Chow', 'Meow Mix' and even a brand connected with the Disney movie 'The Aristo-Cats'. Anything but 'Iams'...that stuff is EXPENSIVE! Finally, in early September, my wife did the unthinkable...she let Felix in the house. He promptly threw up in my daughter's room, but the point had been made. After about a month, Dude and Kramer made their presence known. Sensing that there was food about, the two have habitually stopped by for a quick snack at Felix's expense (we, of course, make sure Felix is not neglected). One night, we were all watching a movie when we heard (and felt) a quick series of thumps against the front of the house. Being that all three cats are male, there was some jockeying for position in the household between Kramer and Dude, an argument which Dude won. While Kramer maintains a respectful distance from the house, the kids quickly discovered that beneath Dude's bloated exterior lies a cat very much in need of some lovin'. When petted, he responds with heavy cuddling and a purr that can be heard from yards away. While Felix curls up in a neat circle for his nap, Dude will splay himself prostrate like a frog ready for disection, as if to say, 'Pet me'. My wife will still puts her foot down on a few things...she still gets a shiver down her spine if a cat rubs up against her, which is now often. If we're sitting down to a meal or if we're going out or even ready for bed, the cat goes out. Still, there are instances of further softening of her dislike. The photo above, for instance. While one cat made his way into her heart through his sorry plight, another had charmed even the most savage breast. That's not Felix in her lap...that's Dude.