birthday parties – Page 2

Blogger and actress Elizabeth Banks just did a fun post looking back on her birthdays in years past. She encouraged her readers to do the same. It’s perfect timing for me to participate, as the second anniversary of my 29th birthday is in a couple weeks.

good friends hangin' out at our costa rica casa. (photo by e brooks) — Good friends hangin’ out at our Costa Rica casa. (Photo by E Brooks)

My Best Birthday Ever was only a year ago…

It involved being in Costa Rica, with 11 amazing people, sharing two idyllic vacation villas, grilling our own food, making fresh guac and eating under the stars, being newly knocked up with the-fetus-that-would-become-Eva, and getting surprised on the actual birth day when the pals all showed up wearing bastardized Costa Rican flag t-shirts with my face on them. (The shirt did lead to a minor snafu at the airport with Costa Rican officials, but we all eventually made it home.)

My Worst Birthday Ever was in sixth grade, when I turned 12.

It started out awesome, with my dad surprising me in the morning with a “dirt cake.” He dumped ice cream into a flower pot and topped it with a layer of oreo cookie crumbles and gummy worms. But that night, when I hosted a little scavenger hunt at the mall, my friends Samantha and Kelly decided to shoplift some rings from JC Penney and got detained by mall security, then slipped out of the questioning room when no one was watching and disappeared. This led to a few frantic hours in which two 6th graders were missing in suburban St. Louis. Birthday FAIL.

My Most Absurd Birthday Ever was when I turned 21.

It involved going to a Ja Rule concert in the basketball stadium at Mizzou. Enough said.

The guys from HBO’s Entourage would often just drop into Vegas for an evening, so when Friend Matt said to come on out for his birthday weekend, I called Friend Liz, she said “I love this” and on Saturday, we hopped on a flight.

Knowing we would meet many folks for the first time, I joked on our flight out that I wanted to be called “Kenneth.” It cracks me up when people are named one thing but then go by something totally random.

So during introductions, I said, “I’m Elise. But you can call me Kenneth.” Our new pal, Owen, got the joke right away and made up some name he, too, would go by. The gals next to us also seemed to catch on, laughing gamely. It was amusing for about two minutes before the conversation shifted and the ol’ Kenneth gag was history.

To communicate with his dozen friends in the desert, Matt used a group texting service in which the sender’s name precedes his or her message. I participated in the texting, as did the others, through 24 hours of eating and drinking and dancing and confetti and brunch.

When it was time to head home, we shared a cab to the airport with a gal who sat next to us at dinner the night before. We were discussing the group text system and this is what followed:

Her: Who’s Elise Hu? She seemed pretty talkative on the texting but I can’t remember who that was. She must have been quiet in person.
Me: I’m Elise.
Her: But I thought you were Kenneth.

Tag: birthday parties

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