My Birthday

Today is my legal birthday. There are a lot of memories surrounding it, although I don't remember the first couple of birthdays. I have heard stories about them. I was born on a Wednesday. When I came into this world, I was enrolled in Sunday School at First Baptist Church in New Orleans on the first day. I have seen pictures of me from that time, and I must admit that I was a cute baby. I know, everybody has cute babies, but I truly was. In fact, my brother won an award at school for having a cute brother. I guess time changes things, and cuteness goes away, but for that time, I was cute. I remember some of the early birthday parties. My mother loved to throw birthday parties. As I got older, the parties became more of a private thing. They always got cards for me. For a time, I got very defensive about how old I was. After all, I was older than most of my friends at work. In fact, going back a minute. When I was 14, I took swimming lessons. Everybody else there were like 6 years old, and I had to lie to them that I was big for my age. So anyway, I accepted my age a few years ago. I was acting and playing younger parts, because I looked younger than I was. The State newspaper was writing an article about me and my two friends on our big Beatles collection. I told the writer not to publish my age, and he assured me he wouldn't. When the article came out, it said: "Walter Durst, 39". I called him and asked him why they did it, and he said that it was paper policy to publish ages. After that, I had to come to terms with my age. Now, it is kind of good, because I get senior discounts, even though I am not there yet. I don't tell them different. So, today is my legal birthday. Maybe not the one that is more important to me, which is my emotional birthday of January 4th, but it is still the one that is on my driver's license. Happy Birthday to me.