Today, March 14th, I turned 40. The only 2 people I saw today, that I knew, were my daughter and my mother. Probably 'cause it was a Wednesday. Did I tell you about the first time I found a grey hair on my body? About 10 years ago I was accused - by a man! - of dying my hair. Nope. Never have, never will. Of course I would for a movie role, but... About 2 years ago I stepped out of the shower. Standing in front of the mirror I could see it glistening. It was bold and shocking. It was dead center between my breasts - manly breasts of course. One fucking grey hair just hangin' out between my tits. Boy did I feel like a man! Today I turned forty and that grey hair is still there. It's now long and curly. (No, I haven't given it a name ya fag!) It's the only one I have. My wife says she saw one on my head, but my wife says she sees a lot of things. Now that I can (barely) grow a mustache, what do I get? I get half and half! Half dark brown and half orangy-red-blonde. The hair is all there, it just doesn't look like it 'cause half my mustache is not reflecting back much light!
My weight? Yeah, well, as I lay awake wrestling in bed with Father Time on my last hour of being thirty-anything, I imagined myself doing stand-up comedy [this was after my life started flashing before my eyes - it really did! Images from my earliest memories (which are just sound and shadow and a weird feeling of being very miniscule surrounded by other giant sounds and shadows) to those formative moments that shape who you are to become and yet in retrospect can, from an outsider's perspective (often times adult), appear to be extraordinarily mundane, and of course there will inevitably come a point when you are looking at the little you you once were so long ago and, dumfoundedly, with tears in your eyes, you're sayin to yourself, "How did I get so far away! What happened to all of that?!" then I think of my daughter and realize that I have been unknowingly connecting unseen dots all these years in a circle of life that has begun all over again - and I kept thinking, "They say this only happens when you are about to die!" Well, I told myself that I was not going to fucking die and that actually, my life was just about to begin and that I was just about to start kicking serious ass and stop fucking around with the dumb shit] and I came up with a one-liner on marriage (one of many actually...)
"Thank you... Ya know, I didn't enter into marriage lightly. I didn't leave it lightly either!" [turn sideways, stick out belly and pat. Allow laughter to die down.]
Back to my 40th Birthday: Riding motorcycles, doin shots at the bar, lines in the bathroom, ATM, then off to the strip club with the fellas, right?
Try this one on for size, cause this is what really happened:
My 5 year old daughter took me out to see the Monsters Inc., Disney On Ice show at the Denver Colosseum. We bought a program that came with a blue monsters inc logo'd hard hat, had popcorn, Dippin' Dots (a bowl of pebble sized ice cream balls), and cheeseburgers, then sat down and screamed our brains out in the front row. After the show we played with other kids in the confetti left all over the floor of the colosseum. Driving to the grocery store afterwards (hey, we had just eaten all that crap - we were going to stock up on fresh fruit and vegetables for breakfast. Once at the store my girl reminds me we hadn't had any cake for my birthday yet! Nice try Dakota... no cake at 11 at night! Oddly enough it took 7 attempts - 7 separate card swipes and 7 rejection-try-agains for me to get my pin number right at the checkout stand, i always get it on the first try - 3 people were waiting in line behind me with an item or 2 each in their hands - can anyone say Alzheimers? (or spell it?)] the car would erupt in sudden bursts of light from the overpriced, but really pretty awesome, battery powered monster toy that spins and flashes every time you push the button.
How did my 40th Birthday start? Glad ya asked. My wife was out of town. (Don't even go there. It's a good thing.) I'm havin' a weird dream about guns and various bullet trajectories - some off duty cop ya-hoo was tryin out this new fangled semi-automatic bazooka thing while i was down the firing line tryin to pull my target off the backstop... then there were appetizers and important people and cavernous dwellings,and, well, blah blah, it was just a dream - suddenly Dakota is jumping on my back - did i mention my whip lash? Yeah, last week I go ice-skating with the family. It's my first time and they put me in hockey skates and I'm goin about 1/4 mile per hour and suddenly (everything on ice is suddenly) I'm falling backwards and my arms are twisting and I'm telling myself "Oh it's cool. My arms will break the fall, just like a nice martial arts fall to the mat." Apparently idiocy chooses its own time and place to attack because my arms did not break my fall. My ass wasn't fat enough to keep the back of my skull from greeting the ice. Damn, ice is hard. I thought that all the coins that had fallen out of my pocket were puddles of blood. For a week I felt mildly drunk and my neck was whacked. So here is my beautiful daughter jumping on my back (and all parents out there know that jumping means jumping) screaming, "It's your birthday, it's your birthday! Yeh-hey!" I say, "Ouch sweetie. Just another minute for daddy to sleep ok?" She disappeared but was back in 5 seconds with a card that began to chirp out an electronic version of the Happy Birthday song over and over. She sang along (she has a great voice) and, bless her heart, asked me first if I wanted the "You look like a monkey" version or if I wanted the original style. I love my little girl and I'll never forget this day.
