I just celebrated another birthday. Now, before you start applauding, you need to understand that at my age, birthdays aren’t something I relish with any level of enthusiasm. To me, birthdays merely mark the passage of time. The only thing I do to achieve another year on earth is continue breathing in and out and swing my feet out of bed each morning – which is becoming more difficult than it sounds. Things were simpler before the rise of Christianity. People didn’t know how to calculate the lunar calendar, so they couldn’t keep track of birthdays. Everyone just assumed they were getting older when they couldn’t see their toes any…
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My First Trip Over the Curb Why drive on the road, when you have all this empy curb?
During the 1950s, a driver’s license ranked way up there, along with circumcisions or Bar mitzvahs, signaling a young man had come of age. My father dreaded the day I’d be eligible for my learner’s permit. If it were up to him, he would have preferred celebrating my manhood with a bizarre tattoo or tying me down to an anthill. Nevertheless, it was time for me to get behind the wheel and there was nothing he could do about it. After spending the day in the Department of Motor Vehicles, I finally broke free waving my learner’s permit high above my head. I asked my mom if I could celebrate…
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My Birth Anomalies Birth defects are easy... being normal is tough
Anita Phillips was ugly. I should know. I had to sit behind her, looking at the back of her head during the entire sixth grade. She had big ears, stringy hair and bumps on her head the size of golf balls. If her parents weren’t so cheap, they would have sought the services of a good plastic surgeon for her and spared me a lifetime of suffering. But things could have been worse. In between looking at the back of Anita’s head and staring off into space, I tried to imagine what it would be like to have birth anomalies more serious than big ears. Like having two left feet.…