Multiple Sclerosis is no match for a birthday
The story starts like this. Three besties gather at the home of a fourth to help her celebrate her birthday. The friends are the serious Gidget, the shy Amber, and the wild child Traci.
******Note-names have been changed in this writing to protect the ages and the humiliation of the participants********
The birthday girl was thrilled because her little brother called to wish her a happy 26th birthday,
The girl thought she was actually much older but since her brother is smarter than her and doesn’t have her MS related cognitive difficulties, she decided he must be right. So there she was with her friends, celebrating a birthday that happened to fall on a weekend.
Ok, this third person writing is confusing me and since it doesn’t take much to really confuse me, I will just tell you that I am the birthday girl I am talking about. And yes, according to my brother, I turned 26.
I don’t usually make such a big deal out of my birthday but since it fell on a Saturday, I felt I needed to do something to celebrate. Watching marathon reruns of the original Law and Order episodes didn’t seem to cut it.
Luckily, some of my friends happened to be available.
If I’m only 26, how can it be that I got lightheaded after drinking one glass of wine? What’s wrong with me? It took me an entire five minutes to sip that glass- I shouldn’t have been lightheaded that quickly!
Things went pleasantly downhill from there.
We spent the first part of the evening recalling the times when we were younger, cuter, smarter, dumber and way less tired.
Yes I do know that smarter and dumber mean opposite things and so putting them together in this previous sentence doesn’t make any sense. Allow me to explain it this way-back in time my friends and I were smart enough to figure out how to do the dumb stuff we did and even smarter at knowing how to get away with it.
Sharing stories reminded me of Bruce Springsteen’s hit, Glory Days. Especially the line that says, “I hope when I get older I don’t sit around thinking about them, but I probably will” and the other line that says, “she says when she feels like crying she starts laughing thinking about Glory Days.”
Personally, I think it is ok to reminisce in this way, especially for my friends and me. With my multiple sclerosis brain, who knows how long I’m going to have these memories. As for my friends, cognitively speaking they are fine.
BUT, they ARE old. Who knows how much longer they will remember these stories themselves. I could write them down but that just seems exhausting.
As we cherished how much we used to love to go out, we talked about how glad we were that we weren’t actually going out. The crowds, the drunks, the foolishness, it was all just too much. It was then that we decided to get drunk and foolish.
It started with the game Scattergories.
Problem 1 occurred when Traci and I couldn’t read the game sheets. Amber and Gidget have always worn glasses and even though Gidget was fretting about her ophthalmologist’s suggestion that she get bifocals, she and Amber could see fine.
But I had to pull out my cheaters and I was not happy about it. Since poor Traci had refused to progress to cheaters, she could not see a thing either. I found the lighted magnifying glass that I insisted was all I needed to read before I broke down and bought the cheaters and gave it to Traci.
With all of us ready with our assisted vision devices, we then encountered problem 2. We tried to set the game timer only to discover that it was broken. This was unacceptable on my birthday and so I did the practical thing and banged it several times against my kitchen table.
When that didn’t work, Gidget downloaded a timer on her phone and we began to play. Thing was, we couldn’t remember how long we were supposed to set the timer for and so with each round we played, we gave ourselves more time. By the end of the game I think we were giving ourselves 20 minutes for each round; not that all that extra time helped us any.
We had some classic game moments when we had to find answers beginning with the letter G. Traci came up with Things You Replace-Guys.
Imagine my shock when the normally reserved Gidget answered the part of the body question with a female part that rhymes with C-dot (she had to be channeling Traci to come up with that one,) and my horror when Amber (as big a Rolling Stones fan as I am) couldn’t come up with Gimmie Shelter on song titles, even as I hummed it.
Plus, I think it was playing on the stereo at the time!
What’s happened to us??
Wine, giggles and munchies ensued and as we got even tipsier we moved onto Traci’s favorite game, the hilarious, R/Xrated, adults only, not for the faint of heart Cards Against Humanity.
And it was fun; silly, pointless, crazy fun.
So what if we weren’t out on the town dancing in our highest heels?
(I don’t think I managed heels even in my best “no balance worries” days.)
And so what if Traci and Amber had kids they had to get up and feed first thing the next morning?
And so what if Gidget had to get ready for a crazy work week and her hangover wasn’t going to help her any?
And so what if this birthday fun lead to me falling into a two day attack of the zombie/super blah mode of multiple sclerosis, starting the very next morning?
Fun is fun. And you’ve got to try to find it whenever you can, even if you need a weekend birthday as an excuse.
This thought leads me to another lyric of another song that I chose to adapt for the situation-
It’s my party and I’ll laugh if I want to,
Laugh if I want to
You should laugh too when the tears won’t do
Do, do, do, do, do!
My friends wouldn’t dare take a picture of me feasting on my birthday sweets but if you need an actual image, it looked something like this-
Poor Gidget got stuck taking the pictures but here is one of some of our birthday fun. Guess which one is the friend known as Traci..
Want a helpful tip combined with some shameless self-promotion?
Here it goes-
If you need a birthday present for someone then give them the gift of humor, shared as only I can do it!
MS Madness! A “Giggle More, Cry Less” Story of Multiple Sclerosis is guaranteed to make all readers giggle through whatever ails them!
Don’t believe me?
Then please check out some of the awesome reviews on Amazon!!
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Hee Hee Gee who could Traci be?…its Cards against humanity honey, and How the hell did I come in 3rd place?…And I was in zombie land myself the next day HUH maybe we need to build our tolerance back up?…Anyway I had a blast at your 26th (lol) birthday And even if we are older, our eyesight is poor and some of us may have a gray hair or 2 we will always have plenty of stories to laugh about.
Duhhhhh- I just fixed the name of the game. How can I be surprised that Amber forgot the name of a Stones song when I can’t come up with the name of a game even as I look at the game board! I think I am starting to feel my 26 years… Thank God for friends, memories and “Glory Days!”
ah 26 where art thou? Been many years but this was a funny and cute blog and you are NOT getting older!!
Thank you so much my friend!! I don’t feel older in personality but my body feels differently. Of course, I can always blame body aging on MS. That’s what I usually do…
yeah and hell what with you only being 26 we still have your 30’s to accumulate more stories
Absolutely!!!
As always – wonderfully witty piece Yvonne!
Thank you so much Elena! Hope all is great with you!