Under Cover of Matrimony
June 18th, 2023
Being a June-baby is a bit of a mixed bag.
As a kid, you rivaled royalty. In between the school years, your friends and their families looked to you to herald the arrival of summer. And boy did you deliver. Ice cream soirees and pool party jubilees kicked off every mid-year solstice, echoing carpe diem evenings from the gardens of Versailles across time.
Or so you thought.
What was certain, was the fate of your friends—those with non-summer birthdays. The best those clowns could hope for were birthday bash bummers complete with underinflated balloons on a school-night.
Then as a teenager, your hubris caught up with you.
Yes, your friends still celebrated your special day every summer. But the birthday candles no longer warmed the cockles of your heart the same way they used to. How could the attention of a choice-few compare to everyone’s attention at school? The popular kids with fall birthdays never knew how good they had it.
Finally, as an adult, we’re all on even footing again. Nobody’s birthday matters when you’re an adult. We’re all too busy working. The only reprieve comes at twenty-two when seemingly every girl in the country plays Taylor Swift’s 2012 hit “22” to flash the briefest of lights inside the gaping maw of adulthood responsibilities until retirement.
Yes, your birthday goes the way of the dodo bird. All those jubilees. Every single pool party. They taunt you with belittling waves through the rear-view mirror.
Then something strange happens. Your birthday is replaced by an altogether different milestone. The transition probably happens at age 22, given that’s when Taylor felt anxious enough to hype up her entirely unimportant twenty-second birthday with a dedicated song, but I digress. The point is, you’ll know life’s changed when you see it.
It’s already happened when you ask for a day off for your birthday and your boss sneers at you while your co-workers shake their heads. By then, you’re already halfway down the proverbial hill of life.
Enter the anniversary.
Ask that same boss for a week off to celebrate your anniversary? They’ll pack your bags for you, give you a raise, and drive you to the airport. Before you know it, you’ll be in Cancun sipping on coconut milk and rum.
But we don’t settle for replacements here in CT Emerson’s Procrastination Station. You see, dear reader, I never forgot about the sheer injustice of my summer birthdays drifting away to golden-tinted obscurity.
In the fires of Mount Doom—or at least my home office—I thought of a counter-curse.
Get married on your birthday, folks ;)
On that note, I’m off to Santa Barbara to celebrate my five year anniversary with my wife. And you better believe we’ll be enjoying an ice-cream soiree for my very special birthday while we’re there.
Oh yeah. You probably want an update on the NOVA series.
NOVA 02 beta draft? Done.
NOVA 02 beta reader feedback? Received.
NOVA 02 cover? In progress.
NOVA 02 zeta draft? In progress.
Hotel? Trivago (give me free stuff, Trivago!)
Also, I got a vintage typewriter for my birthday! NOVA 03’s gonna be done before you know it!
The end always arrives.
C. T.