Life's an Adventure - The Birthday

Back in 2019, I pitched a story to "Your Time" magazine, which led to my own column called "Life's an Adventure".
That first story was inspired by a true event involving a Swedish stranger and a chairlift on a Scandinavian ski slope.

Since then, I've shared many an anecdote including this one, simply entitled "Birthday."

“60 is the new…what was I saying?” Not my 60th, though it is only a few short years away.
2020 was to be a big year in the birthday department. My mother-in-law turned 90, my husband celebrated 60 years and my daughter, 30. My husband is notoriously hard to buy for. We usually go for experiences or holidays in lieu of material gifts. The children and I began discussions for the upcoming event.
Could we be silly enough to make a “60” bag? Of course we could! For those not familiar, it is a bag of 60 individually wrapped gifts, 1 for each year. Taking it a step further, we put funny notes on each one, giving a cryptic hint at the contents. The theme was old age.

“So you want us to come up with 60 ways to make fun of Dad for his birthday.”
Sounded harsh when put like that, but, yes.

Many parcels contained his favourite foods. Marmalade. Beef Jerky. I even wrapped a banana! Deodorant, toilet paper and soap were among the items that we passed off as gifts. It started to feel like a grocery shopping list. We resorted to home-made gifts, including a trivia quiz. The questions all related to cars which are of great interest to him. Not to me though, resulting in plenty of online research.

Even the novelty candles for the cake became a gift with the note:
We wanted to give you 60 of these but didn’t want to burn down the house!

When we ran low on quips about creaking bones and failing memory, we used some terrible puns and riddles. They were old and became worse as we went, but we knew they would appeal to the king of Dad jokes.

We wrapped coins for the morning coffee he enjoys on his way to work.
What do you call a sad cup of coffee? A Depresso.

I moustache you a question…don’t worry, I’ll shave it for later. Shaving cream, in case you didn’t guess.

Razors? – sharp, much like our wit.

Instant money tickets brought out jokes about itches and scratches, including one about Juan scratching himself during a quiz night. The cringe-worthy punchline? Nobody expected a Spanish in-quiz itching.

There was an emphasis on chocolates as a whole box makes many gifts when wrapped in pairs.
A few days after his happy and rather successful birthday, hubby randomly announced that he really should cut back on sugar. I’m sure someone will help him out with the supply of chocolate in our fridge.

Ah, life’s an adventure!