"Because it's my birthday, and I wants it." - Smeagol, Lord of the Rings

 

It’s Pop Wilder’s birthday today. Sending things like cards take valuable time that I could use drinking beer reading the Bible, so every year I send him an e-mail telling him thanks for putting up with me when I was younger. Think of it as turning sloth into a higher purpose, kind of like when your kid gives you a construction paper card for Father’s Day, with one year scratched out and replaced with the next.

With that, I share with you the 2007 version of my birthday letter to Pop Wilder:

Pop,
Happy Birthday!!!!!

Seems like just yesterday when I was there at the Wilder Bunker and helping you haul in enough firewood to last until 2143.

Some of the things that I’m thankful to you for:

-Thank you for ignoring that lying bus driver when I was in kindergarten. I most certainly did not have to sit next to her because that was the only way that she could keep an eye on me. Also, I most certainly did not open the door while she was making a turn. Finally, I did not open that door because I thought it would be more efficient if she didn’t have to stop when she came to our house. If she never called you like she told me she would, never mind.

-While we’re on kindergarten, thank you for calling the cops when I went sleepwalking and was asleep in the closet. It shows you care.

-Thank you for not freaking out too much when you found that I’d opened up the ink tubes from those pens that you brought home from work to do some impromptu artwork under my bed. I’m especially happy that you didn’t mind when you found that that artwork on the hardwood floors the night before we moved after we’d sold the house.

-Oh, and thank you for not being mad when I took all of the family photos and immersed them in water trying to stretch them and make them bigger, like I’d seen on TV (I think it was Greg Brady that did this). At least I turned off the light before I destroyed soaked our irreplaceable memories.

-Did you know there are household chemicals that you shouldn’t mix? Found that out in the bathroom when I added them to the photos. I sure am glad I got out before the levels were lethal.

-What did the poison control center say after you discovered that I’d eaten all of Mom’s birth control pills when I was four? For the record, they’re not as tasty as they look in the package.

-Thank you for solving the mystery of the bear that I saw on Christmas Day after getting that new Daisy™ BB© gun. I really must still say that a black plastic bag stuck on a barbed wire fence looks exactly like a bear, especially in the snow. I’m sorry you fell down in the hip-deep snow. Was it cold?

-I’m still amazed that you and Mom never asked how the muddy footprint got on the ceiling when I was in third grade. Seems I forgot to tell you that I’d spent the day in the river with C.R. and when I’d gotten home I’d flicked the blue Keds© off of my feet and one went just a wee bit farther and higher than I’d expected. I still remember watching it go end-over-end in a silent upward trajectory, bits of mud shooting off in spirals down the hall. I also remember the splat sound it made as the sole of the shoe hit the ceiling absolutely flat, and then looking up and seeing my muddy footprint up there. I imagine you and Mom looking up at the perfectly white ceiling, seeing the perfect Keds™ imprint, and thinking, “I don’t really want to know . . .”

-Thank you for ignoring the semi-constant smell of ozone from my bedroom and the continual trips I made to the breaker to flip it back on. Did you know that a ten year old can make a decent electric arc welder using pretty much anything that plugs into the socket and a steel rod? I sure didn’t. That might explain the carpet burns and how I couldn’t see anything for a week. For the record, I still can’t weld very well.

Whew.

How are things in the bunker? I hope that your ammunition still remains dry.
Love,
John

Okay, sure, so this has very little to do with the actual e-mail I sent. It was way more sappy. But all of the stuff up there is true. How did I ever remain alive?