It’s always amazed me how differently my family handles birthdays as opposed to Shirley’s family. When I was growing up we would lump about 12 or 13 people’s birthdays together, spanning the course of 3 to 4 months, get a cake from this bakery that made a Bill Knapp’s cake seem like a delicacy, and then do it all over again in another 3 to 4 months. I am not sure how they determined the cut off for when one’s birthday was lumped in with other birthdays, but it accomplished the ultimate goal of seeing family members as little as possible. Now, what I just described was the Jansma side of my family, the Rozema side typically did not acknowledge birthdays, and if it did it was celebrated with a bowl of Shop Rite (For those unfamiliar with Shop Rite, take Family Fare and immerse it in poverty and you have Shop Rite or just go visit the Family Fare on Fulton and Fuller) vanilla ice cream and possibly a card. Shirley’s family on the other hand, will actually have a dedicated party for only one person. On top of that, and this always gets me, there is a family text string where they wish happy birthday to people, and frequently those people are not even on the text string. A lot of this I like to attribute to my mother in law, her birthday is in June, not just one day, she’s decided that instead of the typical day a person gets to commemorate their coming into existence, she gets an entire month. (she just asked me what we are going to do to celebrate my 50th birthday later this month, my response was “nothing”)

Needless to say, my kids have benefited greatly from the fact that we don’t do birthday’s the Jansma way. Parker had his 11th birthday party this past weekend, his 11th birthday was on Tuesday and was sandwiched by the family party last weekend (he did have to share the spotlight with his cousin Noah) and his friends party which was an overnight from Saturday to Sunday. Growing up, I remember none of my friends wanting to come over to my house because they were scared of my mom, heck I was scared of my mom until my late 30’s, but our house seems to be the hub for a lot of activity. The neighbor kids often come over to our house after school due to the fact that they can do whatever they want, their mom is a stay at home mom (what do stay at home moms do all day when their kids have reached school age?) and is typically home regulating their behavior. A few weeks back Aiden had a friend over and I was yelling at him for something that was probably well warranted. He was in shock that I was yelling at him when he had a friend over. My parents never held back on the rare occasion I had a friend over. His options were, have a friend over and get yelled at or not have a friend over and get yelled at. Obviously, there is a third option, don’t do dumb shit that gets you yelled at, but that third option is less likely to occur than CBS not showing Taylor Swift every time Travis Kelce did something even semi noteworthy during the Super Bowl. 

I think it has been indicated that Shirley and I see each other for roughly 11 minutes during the week, and none of those 11 minutes are spent coming up with a plan for anything, so I had no idea what was going on for Parker’s party. What I did know is that I had pickle ball on Saturday from 2-4 and tennis from 4-6. Probably should have alerted Shirley to that fact, but why would I change my normal course of behavior on the weekends? the kids coming over were in fifth grade, pretty sure they didn’t need my help with anything. At 1:30 I left under the guise that I was running errands for the party. (I did move my tennis match to Sunday morning because that’s the kind of sacrifice I’m willing to make for my favorite kid, had it been Aiden’s birthday I probably wouldn’t have made it back home until 8 or 9pm) When I showed up home with a bunch of craft beer (Meijer had a buy one get one half off sale) and ice cream Shirley was a bit incensed. In my defense, I suggested pizza but Shirley wanted to do a taco bar. (I did make chocolate chip cookies and brownies when I got home, as well as get a campfire going) After the kids finished dinner and Parker opened his presents, they went outside to play capture the flag. Unfortunately, they only had 7 kids so I was roped into playing, instead of sitting inside drinking my newly purchased craft beer. When I was a little kid the adults would play capture the flag out at Green Lake on our 55 acre property (my grandfathers purchased it in the 30’s for $3,800). I was always left out of the contest because I was too young. That version of capture the flag involved two handkerchiefs and nothing else. This version of capture the flag involved wrist bands that either had a red or a blue light on it to signify which team you were on, as well as a blue and red lit up jail and blue and red cube for the flag. 

Shirley eventually made her way out to sit by the fire and the kids were surprised how much effort I was putting into capture the flag, Shirley told them all, Mr. Jansma wants to win at everything. To be honest, I am still kicking myself for not coming away with the flag when all the players were distracted and engaged with one another, and Max and I were able to make our way around the perimeter through the woods and had ample uninterrupted time to get the flag and make it back into our territory, only I couldn’t find their flag prior to the other team getting ours. I was sprinting, army crawling, and almost took a header on multiple occasions, but it was worth it to actually get the flag in one of the scrimmages and heroically make it back into my territory yelling “we won! we won!” as if I had just secured a gold medal at the 24 Paris games. At one point we were taking a break and I was rehydrating with a craft beer by the fire. Shirley mentioned the fact that I was about to turn 50 and one of the kids said their uncle just turned 50. Shirley asked if his uncle would be playing capture the flag if he could, his response “No, he’s fat”. 

Back to my competitiveness, Shirley picked up a new game called splendor duel that involves a head to head battle that is similar to the game splendor but can only be played with two players. Thursday night I had lost three times in a row, I was so incensed I almost didn’t want to have sex, almost. But I wasn’t going to give Shirley extra incentive to win. I was vindicated on Saturday with back to back wins, the first in landslide fashion. What amazes me is the joy of winning never comes close to matching the agony of defeat. The next morning I headed out to play tennis and in my first set received a call from Shirley. She was wondering where I was even though she knows I play tennis every Sunday morning. She was quite upset that she had to go to the store to get eggs and make breakfast for the kids that had attended the party (basically the stuff I do 90% of the time). Obviously, I did not mention that fact and sent her this text before heading back home “This my fault I have taken advantage of the freedom that I have and need to reign it in. I’m sorry I should have communicated to you last night what was going on.” When I got home breakfast was made and I had a plate. I could really get use to having breakfast ready when I return home from tennis every Sunday morning. While I realize this is getting long, I will quickly let you know that I canceled pickle ball for that afternoon from 2 to 4pm with the following text to my playing partners “I’m going to need a sub, my wife is going to lose her shit if I tell her I’m playing pickle ball from 2-4. And I don’t need anymore craft beer or ice cream so I can’t claim I”m running errands.” I ended up playing some of the best pickle ball I have ever played. In the third to last game I was at a 4.5 level.