Today would have been my sister Erin’s 44th birthday. Since I’d rather think about happier times than what it’s like to have her birthday without her, here’s a story about an earlier celebration.
She was turning...sixteen? Seventeen? One of those upper teen years. I’m thinking sixteen because she would have been old enough to work at our dad’s drugstore, but probably not old enough yet to drive on her own. She had to work on her birthday that year, which was on a Saturday, and would have had to ride home with our dad. This became part of an important plan.
Saturdays at the drugstore were long, slow, boring death marches. She was planning on going out with one of her friends after work to celebrate her birthday, probably with a movie or something because there was little else for wholesome youth to do back in the sub-suburban wasteland in which we lived back in the 1980s. Little did Erin realize she would not be going out that night. Instead, a group of her friends had come together to arrange a surprise party, back at our house. We lived about eight miles from the middle of nowhere, dead center between two towns that could barely sustain respective populations robust enough to merit being mentioned in the same breath as outer-tier Minneapolis suburbs. Because of this, it took anyone we knew at least twenty minutes to get to our house, and that was only if they were familiar enough with the maze of dirt roads that had be navigated to find it.
Dad was in on the plan when it became a surprise party. He was supposed to take his time driving home after work that night to build up her frustration; after all, she had just put in a ten-hour day and was primed for some birthday shenanigans, so the party ringleaders thought it would be even funnier if she was cranked up a tiny bit more when the surprise hit. He took it a step further than necessary though, and went out of his way to meander through a car lot on the edge of town to window shop new models instead of just taking the most direct route home. Our dad has always been a car guy and this had been a habit of his since we were young children. While he casually rolled through the lot, Erin just stewed, too angry to say anything because she knew she’d explode and wouldn’t be able to pull back once she cut loose.
Back at our house, her friends had been arriving in plenty of time. All of their cars had been moved at least a street away to make sure she wouldn’t see or recognize any of them when she and our dad finally made it home. Everyone who had been invited was down in the basement waiting quietly, growing increasingly curious about what was taking them so long. When the car finally pulled into the driveway, it had to be a good half-hour later than the usual drive time back from the store would have been.
Erin came in seething, silent and angry. Somehow our mother steered her into the basement -- I don’t remember for sure, but I think the manufactured reason had something to do with a shirt she wanted to wear that night being down in the laundry room. When she threw open the basement door and flicked on the lights, all of her friends were there waiting, yelled surprise, and BAM, at the same moment she was smacked in the face with a pie crust filled with whipped cream. The friend who had the idea for the pie got her so hard and so perfectly square in the face that her nose put a dent in the bottom of the pie tin. We actually had photographic proof of this afterward. Erin scaled back from DEFCON 1 almost immediately once she figured out what was going on, and all of the girlfriends filled our basement with a huge party for the rest of the night.
I hope whatever birthdays might be worth for her now, she’s having a great time tonight.
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