...Happy Birthday to Me...

08 MAY 2010

Today is my Birthday. I am 27 years old. The boys in the CET all signed a card. On the front are two kids playing basketball; one of them has a giant gold star on his shirt. It’s funny because whenever they do something good, I award them ‘Gold Stars’. Scuteri filled all of the radios so I pat him on the shoulder and say, “Good job, buddy, Gold Star!” And so on.

This is my second Birthday in Iraq. The first one, back in 2003, was spent stuck up on a wall getting twenty licks from a belt by my squad mates. This year, I was given comforting words from my Lieutenant about 30 being the new 20. And I think, “Oh, how Iraq has changed…” It’s a good thing too, I imagine, the idea of 27 lashings doesn’t sound very agreeable right about now.

The first Birthday I can remember, I was 8 or 9, maybe 7, I don’t know, and my school teacher was there. Mrs—or Miss or Ms or whatever—Covey something or other was her name. She deployed in the middle of the school year as an Army Reservist for the Iraq War: Part One. And I remember we all dressed up like Batman characters and stuff.

My favorite one—to date—was turning 23. Liezel, my South African angel, surprised me at midnight with champagne and sang in such a sweet voice and yada-yada-yada. It is debatable, my closest friends would argue, that this couldn’t possibly be my favorite. “After all,” they say, “What about the great times we’ve had? The trips to the Keys and island parties and block parties and keggers and such!” They go on, “And didn’t you have to bring her to the airport and send her home that same day?” Yes, I remember all the good times, and yes, she left that day too. Maybe my happy-o-meter is askew, or something, but it was my favorite.

I guess it’s expected I’d say, “Dude, when I turned 21 that was awesome! I got so f’ing messed up, man!” But that isn’t true. I turned 21 just a month or so after the first deployment; was happily married; and had yet to begin ‘self-medicating’. It only took six Long Island Iced Teas at dinner to make my night end throwing up in the shower. And if it weren’t for my poor wife, I probably would have drowned in that tub. So no, I imagine, 21 was not awesome or my favorite. Not by a long shot. 21 was stupid.

And what would I be doing right now if this deployment didn’t happen and I was spending the day back home? It would probably be a toss up between what I did last year verses the year before it. It is quite likely that I’d spend it alone at some beach bum bar, bare footed with my toes in the sand, while I sipped on a Margarita—on the rocks, no salt—and reading Vonnegut or something of the sort. But it is just as likely that I’d creep around in some hole-in-the-wall, trying to find some ‘patriotic civilian’ or old Vet who wants to buy the young hero a drink in exchange for a good war story—even though what they’d get from me is probably some watered-down, hippie-leftist, tree-hugging gibberish and such. But I can’t please everyone.

All that aside, Happy Birthday to me.

- The Exodus