Birthday Surprises

"If you cry on your birthday, you'll cry all year round," my Nan said at my fourth birthday party, while I sobbed into her skirt about my mean neighbours.  Wrapped in her warm soft bosom I started to feel calm until I thought about the words.

"But......*sob*.....it's too late.......*sniff*....I've already..*sob* .......cried." 

"Come, come now. We'll run out of tissues if you don't stop soon. We wouldn't want a flood on your birthday would we? All your cards might go floating down the street and we'd have to find someone with a boat to fetch them and I don't know anyone with a boat, do you?"

I didn't.

She let me use the edge of her sleeve to dry my eyes and promised me cucumber.

I decided that if I ever had children then I wasn't going to stop them crying on their birthday. In fact, I might make it compulsory.

When my daughter was 18 we had a surprise party. She came in, saw all her friends and cried. 

Today, my son is 18 and last night I was feeling guilty that I hadn't planned any crying opportunities, only a meal out with the family, which is unlikely to make him cry.

My children are so different that we have always joked that they are like two halves of a perfect person, or a really rubbish one, depending on which bits and your point of view.  At dinner time it was like feeding Jack Sprat and his wife. He would swap his vegetables for her meat. He sleeps like the living dead and she wakes at the slightest noise. She is a night owl and he is an early bird. She can write, he can do numbers. She has friends, he prefers his own company. She likes cats, he likes dogs. He understands logic and she gets people. She likes to be warm while he wears shorts all year round and sleeps in arctic conditions with the windows open and the fan 

blowing. She loved a surprise party but he would hate it.

The Long Suffering Husband said, "I worry that we treat him differently."

As it was the first week back at school after half term and I had forgotten how tired it was possible to be I was completely rational (not) and 

cried. Then I pulled myself together and remembered that we have to treat him differently because they are not the same.

However, we needed to mark the occasion in some way. Presents were left downstairs, so that he could react in private.

Lucky 18 money tree

Then, giggling and whispering we worked on his birthday surprise. We planned a balloon avalanche.

How he didn't wake up, we will never know. 

"She's wetting herself," my daughter told the LSH.

He wiped the tears from his eyes, "Yeah, she does that."

"I can see it," she said.

I checked. No sign of leakage. They laughed more.

An engineer at work

The engineer took over. Precise measurements were needed to get the wrapping paper the right size to fit the balloons in. Apparently, every millimetre counts. We put two balloons in but the third ripped the paper off the 

doorframe. The engineer went back to the drawing board and I banged my elbow on the doorframe.

"Ooh, that's not funny," I whisper-shouted.

But it was.

Finally, we put the balloons in.

"I think it might be even more fun planning a birthday surprise for a reluctant 18year old."

"Well, he won't cry like I did at my surprise party."

"Hmmm. I'm not sure. He might if he can't get out of his room and he needs a wee!"

At six am. We heard his door handle move and we all sprang out of bed to watch. The door opened, closed quickly and he said, "Ugh, I'm going back to bed."

No tears though.