History of my birthdays

This is a short history of birthdays that I have vivid memories of. 5 years old I remember my mother taking me up the block to McDonald's where a lot of my friends were already there and I had a birthday party! I don't remember too much from the party itself other than the fact that we got the cool, red boomerang things as a parting gift. I also remember eating the Ronald McDonald cookie that was on top of my birthday cake. Back then, McDonald's used to have a program where you fill out this little slip and drop it in the huge deposit box in the lobby which you could get sent a card with a coupon for a free hamburger, small fries, and small drink. I made sure I did that EVERY year from that point on until I got too old for that stuff.

After the party, we came home and I opened up a few gifts. I got two remote control cars. One was a big, red Trans-Am that had the cord attached to the control. The other one was a small, dark-red colored Porsche which was a radio-controlled car with no wire attached. Later on that evening, we went to Showbiz Pizza Place! So, this birthday was pretty much fire to say the least.

6 years old I remember my sisters had baked a carrot cake and instead of candles, they put six pieces of gum on top of the cake! I also remember that I got the Coleco Gemini as my birthday gift and we were playing with it the day BEFORE my birthday while my mother was away doing something.

7 years old I don't remember having any party or anything. I just did the McDonald's free meal thing, but when I was coming home from school that day, I saw my sister and my grandfather taking a brand new BMX bike out of the trunk of his car. This was my birthday gift! It was a Team Murray Track 330. This isn't an actual picture of MY bike, but it is a picture of the same model minus the padding.

8 years old This birthday was LEGENDARY. At least, how I remember it. I could be wrong about this, but knowing how things were back then, it's hard for me to believe that all this was done without it being my birthday. I remember coming home from school on a Friday and my mother and sister were putting together a new entertainment center in the living room. It was customary to change out of my school clothes into my play clothes before I could go outside to play. My mother said, "Don't change out of your clothes yet, because we are going to Ponderosa."

If that is all we had done that weekend I would have been straight because I LOVED going to Ponderosa. However.....it was not. After having dinner and enjoying ourselves she tells me that we are going to the movies. I asked what we were going to see, and she said that I was going to see Godzilla 1985: The Legend Is Reborn. My jaw just hit the floor. I couldn't believe it.

The movie was AMAZING of course. I remember seeing all the promotional material on TV for the movie for months and being excited about it including all the goofy Dr. Pepper commercials as well.

To this very day I cannot drink a Dr. Pepper without thinking about Godzilla! I obviously asked my mother if we could go see it and she never said yes, or no. It was one of those, "Well see....." type of things which usually meant "yes" but not right now. The Saturday morning after all this fun, I was in the kitchen messing around with this secret spy decoder toy I got out of a box of Capt. Crunch (which is the most DISGUSTING breakfast cereal EVER created IMO, but I tricked my mother into buying it just so I could get the toy!) LOL!! Anyway, while I was sitting there, I was just basking in the afterglow of such an incredible evening. I could still hear Godzilla's awesome "roar" in the back of my mind. I was a HUGE kaiju fan at this point in my life. I had watched many of the old films from the SHOWA era every Saturday afternoon at 1:00PM on Super 18 in Milwaukee, and then later on TBS. So, seeing a brand new Godzilla movie with modern (at the time) special effects was incredible........but we are not done!

Now, this is where it gets confusing. It is entirely possible that I misremembered the date of all this, or it happened exactly as I remembered it, because I also remember having a birthday party. I have pictures of this. It was a Transformers theme for the party. All of the plates, cups, and napkins had Transformers stuff on them, and my birthday cake had a small Optimus Prime on it. You can clearly see 8 candles on the cake so this was my 8th birthday party.

So, it is POSSIBLE that this party happened on a Sunday and the other stuff happened on that Friday. If not, who cares. I choose to remember it ALL happening for my 8th birthday!! 9 years old I had a pajama party that wasn't all that great. My friends came over, we had hot dogs, chips, and soda. We played for awhile, then went to bed. When I woke up, everyone had left and went home already in the middle of the night. So, that was a bummer. After this, I did not have a birthday "party" again until I was an adult. More on that later. The next several years had the same pattern which was still a blessing. I would get my little coupon from McDonald's like I mentioned earlier and get my free hamburger, fries, and soda. My grandfather every year would give me $25 for my birthday. One year I remember using it to buy a microscope. The reason being is that I got the Transformer toy, Perceptor, which transformed into a functional microscope. This peaked my interest in microscopes in general, so when I got my $25 bucks from my grandfather, I took it to Kay-Bee Toy Hobby and bought a microscope. I can't remember too many things I ever bought with my birthday money. I usually just put it in my piggy bank and used it to buy snacks on occasion. 37 years old The next "memorable" birthday that I had was about 11 years ago. My brothers took me to Gameworks in Schaumburg, IL (it's gone now unfortunately) and we had a good time playing the arcade games there. They also all pitched in and bought me an XBOX One console. Also on this date we went to the Galloping Ghost Arcade. I call this place the "collapsed dimension" because when you look at it from the outside, it doesn't look that big or impressive, however, when you are inside there are seemingly ENDLESS rows of arcade machines that just go on and on and on and on and every time you feel like you found them all, you discover a new area with MORE machines. It's nuts! This was my first time visiting that arcade. That day was very special to me, and I'll never forget it. These days I don't really celebrate my birthday or holidays. It's just a personal choice. However, I am grateful and thankful to God that he allowed me to have those wonderful experiences and great memories of birthdays of the past and I can always pull those memories any time I want.