Stay Tuft.

I have completed another orbit around the sun. Still no hamburger earmuffs. Although, a tufting gun made it onto my wish list a few days before my birthday. I assume nobody got me that tufting gun because they didn’t have enough time.

Before yesterday, I can’t remember ever having sunshine on my birthday. I used the need for a rubber eraser to go for a walk. Eraser was acquired, as was Vitamin D. Yes, it felt so good being twice the age of the majority. Then I got a text from the landlord suggesting they wanted to evict me ASAP.

I didn’t think anything could beat an alarm clock as the worst birthday gift I’ve ever received. (My parents gave me the clock so they didn’t have to wake me up for school anymore.)

I’m meeting with the landlords this weekend to see if I’ll need to file a complaint with the Residential Tenancy Branch. If I’m too old for this bullshit, so are my landlords.

My birthday was ruined for an hour until Tammy whisked me to her home to put a party dunce cap on my head and feed me chocolate cake. She’d asked me two days earlier for my favourite cake, to which I answered, “ice cream cake” before realizing that I’d gotten so old that I’d developed an intolerance to lactose. My favourite cake is now also my least favourite cake.

I loved the liberal use of the piping gun. I’ve wanted an excuse to use my piping gun for a while, but that was before I discovered tufting guns.

Anyway, the cake was ace. The companionship, even better. We talked about the parties and cakes we had growing up. I told them that when Dairy Queen offered to put photos on cakes, my parents used my 11th grade school photo one year.

Jordan: “Were you embarrassed?”

Me: “I don’t think so.”

Tammy: “How old were you when they did this, though?”

It was my 16th birthday, so the school photo was from the same year. My friends’ cake for me that year, however, was embarrassing. At the time, it was the most hilarious thing they’d ever done for me. 

What they did was get DQ to use a photo of a guy I hated at the time and pipe on the words, “CUT ME!”

*cue laughter*

Then, Jordan asked an unexpected question: “Why did you hate him?”

And I am now old enough to have forgotten the details. I’ve had a blog for 20 years. So many details from my past linger in a word document. Regrettably, this situation predated my blogging days.

As far as I can remember, a close friend initially had a crush on this guy. I had her crush as an ICQ contact, so we chatted as well. At some point my friends’ feelings towards him went from pure adoration to sheer hatred. I don’t remember why as I was not a part of whatever was happening between them.

Now, he was aware that the girl who hated his guts was a good friend of mine. He accused me of being two-faced, which was somewhat true because I laughed at the things my friend was saying about him. I then learned that he’d gotten a friend to hack my computer to access my ICQ chat history. So, he wanted to involve me? Fine.

FINE.

As revenge, I stuck gum in his hair. Twice. On separate occasions.

Jordan, after five minutes of reeling from the pettiness: “How long was his hair?”

Me: “Not long. The gum didn’t even stick, which is why I tried again on another day.”

I don’t know how successful my second gum ambush was as I ran away immediately afterward. That night the three of us all dared to attend the same party. My friend’s revenge plan was to dump sugar in his gas tank. Hilariously, instead of a hefty bag of sugar, she came armed with a single-serve sugar packet. Fortunately, neither of us could remember which car belonged to him, so whatever rust bucket he was driving at the time was unharmed by four grams of sugar.

This friend, along with a few others, called ourselves the “Evil Squad”. Unlike the sugar packet in Gum Hair’s gas tank, the Evil Squad dissolved shortly after high school. A year or so later, I ran into this guy at a friend’s gathering. We apologized to each other. When I told Single-Serve Sugar Packet that we’d made peace, she was unhappy as she was still hanging tight onto that grudge!

Ah, teenagers. Such sociopaths.

A photo of the cake is available upon request.

Back to 2021: Tammy gave me the most adult gift, which is socks. But they’re electric socks! So that I can zap people’s asses when I kick butt.

Tomorrow, I’m heading over to Gomorrah (the mainland) on a seaplane. This trip seems ill-timed, but I don’t have any friends directly affected by the Fraser Valley flooding. I’d already cancelled my last trip to the mainland due to the COVID second wave. This week, I will be seeing a former Evil Squad member (possibly two!), my birthday twin, a formidable Scrabble opponent, my opa, and Zoée. All double vaccinated.