A birthday observed

...kind of.

Last Wednesday marked the thirtieth year of my birth. It is a day that I have never celebrated very much externally; internally it has a much deeper significance for me.

On the day of my birth, Easter Sunday 1978 (March 26), I received the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation from the hands a Franciscan priest who taught history at Quincy University.

On this day I was born to earthly life and to heavenly life and received the name of "Christian," as the early martyrs referred to themselves.

The milestone of having turned thirty meant - and still means - nothing to me whatever. I condsider it no big deal. The only birthday I really looked forward to was my 25th, and that only because my insurance rates went down. Considerably.

That being said, it was a good day (with the exception of the conversation with the editor of the local newspaper).

One of my students made a gooey butter cake (it'll clog your arteries and kill you, but it's worth it!) and brought it into class. It reminded me of something my friends and I did in high school.

Our trigonometry teacher (I remember nothing of the class and couldn't tell you what trigonometry actually is) was a bit of curmudgeon, and we loved him for it. In his own way, he was fond of us, too.

We somehow caught word of his birthday and went out and bought a cake for him and stopped by his house about 7:00 p.m. to give it to him and sing, "Happy birthday." He wasn't home. So we drove around for twenty minutes or so and returned. He wasn't home. We drove around for another twenty minutes or so and returned. He still wasn't home. We kept stopping by every twenty minutes or so and when he wasn't home yet at 10:15 p.m. we decided to the bring the cake into class the next day.

When we walked in with the cake he gave the impression that he wasn't terribly fond of the idea, but we knew otherwise (as all high school kids do). We sang, "Happy birthday," to him and ate the cake as a class (it was after lunch if I remember rightly). Aftwards we had class; we only took up about fifteen minutes with the little impromptu party.

A couple of weeks later we decided it was time for another cake and so we declared a "A Happy Cake Day" and brought a cake into class completely unannounced.

Again, our teacher gave the impression he wasn't pleased but relented and humored us. We kept this up about every two weeks through the end of school. Eventually, he began to look forward to it, but he wouldn't say so, being a good curmudgeon and all.

I have never enjoyed math, but I did enjoy his class; not his subject but he himself. He is a good man and I hope he is doing well. I've not seen him since high school but he did leave a lasting impression on me, and a good one.

The first, second and third graders also made birthday cards for me. A couple of the students included some jokes, a couple of which I liked:

Did you hear the joke about the bed? Of course not! It hasn't been made yet!

Why is that man standing in the sink? He's a tap dancer!

Most of the students also drew a picture of some kind. These two stood out to me:
Looking at it, I thought I was handing out popcorn at a party or something, which I thought was rather odd. His mother assures me I'm at Mass distributing Holy Communion. Oops! (I always wear proper liturgical attire to do so).

This one must be what a first grader sees at Mass:

I noticed two things in this image: I have a really long torso, and the little guy drew the columns with the decorative ring on them. He's observant!