On the Occasion of His 70th Birthday

If I had a scanner this whole entry would be a history of dad and his mutton chops.

Crushing blow not to have that damn scanner but mom's not letting go of it for love or money. No, really. I offered both.

1. Born July 3, 1937. His dad was born December 24, 1909. What holiday is on January 10? If there isn't one I'm totally breaking the pattern.

2. It wouldn't be completely out of line to call him obsessed with Dickens' A Christmas Carol. He's perfected his staged reading script over the course of almost 40 years. His current theatre company is having their 20th anniversary reading this Christmas...maybe. They've been maybe having their 20th anniversary reading for the past 3 years. The conversation keeps going like this:

"Next year is our 20th year, we should do something special!"

"Yeah totally!" (They're very hip old people.)

[Frenzy of planning and strong arming Auntie Georgette into doing the show even though she's been quitting for like the last 10 years.]

"Wait, you know, I don't think this is 20, I think it's the year after. When did we start?"

"I don't know, can you look it up?'

"Yeah, just a second....oh...yeah, well false alarm."

3. Has Type II Diabetes and chose to take the meds so he could still enjoy cocktail hour. (This is me not judging because if you put meds in one hand an a mimosa in the other, you know which one would win.)

4. I recently found out that he secretly watches Bull Riding, too. Well, secretly until he told me and now everyone knows.

5. Has a Masters Degree earned in the UK, which didn't transfer to the US so he got another one here and then got a PhD, all in Educational Theatre. (Oh, yeah, those last 2 degrees? At Harvard.)

6. Was the head of the music department and the band director in the school district that I went to but left the system between the time I started learning to play the clarinet and the time I started learning the trombone.

7. Drove to and from NYC in one day when my panic disorder blew up a couple of days into my sophomore year in college.

8. Is an only child, so's his dad, so am I. His grandmother might have been, too, I never asked. Fun facts about her include traversing the wild west in a covered wagon and living in a sod hut. Not. Kidding.

9. Once bet an 8th grade class that for every X number of books they read he would come in and play a song on a different instrument for them. He spent a whole school day going in at half hour intervals playing different instruments. They almost beat him. He almost ran out of instruments. Almost. Thank goodness for the (unhealthy?) interest in medieval instruments he developed around his mid-life crisis.

10. Happy Birthday Pop!