The Birthday Curse, pt II

Continued, because this is turning into a very long post...

21 - Ah, my 21st birthday was extra special. First I worked a shift at Safeway (cashier was my replacement crappy job after I fled A&W). I suppose being a cashier isn't so bad if you've got the personality for it, but I really, really didn't. I can't even begin to list all the reasons I was badly suited for the job, but foremost among them were my chronic shyness and my habit of taking it personally when people scream at me. During my tenure, I spent a good portion every single shift humming Lost in the Supermarket under my breath. While I still love that song, I've barely been able to listen to it since. Anyway, after a glassy-eyed day of scanning and making change, I went home to my family's birthday party. These are very small affairs, consisting entirely of serving a cake and singing a horribly off-key version of Happy Birthday (my father was almost entirely deaf, so his musical stylings were particularly amusing). At the time, my sister was enrolled in a journalism program, and decided to use my birthday as the subject for her photo series assignment. Unfortunately, her first round of 'blowing out the candles' photos didn't quite work, so we re-lit them and did it all again. And again. After I was finally allowed to leave the candles extinguished and eat some cake, I slunk on down to the computer in the basement to work on a term paper. The subject? history of western culture. All of it. It was due the next day, so I stayed down there, typing away for the next twelve hours.

22 - I have no idea.

23 - On my 23rd birthday I got letter from a friend, telling me that a mutual friend had drowned in an accident. There's really nothing funny about this.

24 - I can't even remember what the problem was, but I was going through some job drama at this time and was mainly unemployed. I finally ran out of money and decided I needed to appply for Unemployment (or, as it was euphemistically renamed, Employment Insurance). Not entirely why I decided to do this on my birthday. Anyway, I started filling out the form on a computer at the office and soon got to the date of birth information. As a check against typos and mistakes, the computer would pop up with a confirmation message after every entry. Thus, when I typed in my date of birth, a dialogue box popped up, informing me that "YOU ARE 24 YEARS OLD." Yeah, well happy birthday to you, too, asshole.

to be continued again...