Summer Birthdays

Hey all you summer babies out there. I’m a summer baby too.

I know how it is. It blows chunks. Other kids get to celebrate their birthdays every year in school. They get to spread the word around the class a freaking week in advance. With a single “It’s my birthday next Friday,” everyone is abuzz for days, thinking about the interruption this will surely cause in math, or maybe reading if they’re lucky. You join in, acting chipper and shit, but you’re screaming on the inside “IT’S NOT LIKE FUCKING ARTHUR AND D.W. ARE COMING TO THE CLASS, GET A FUCKING GRIP ASSHOLES!!”

Then, moms (and dads, or guardians – I know that families come in all different shapes and sizes) show up to the classroom door with some damn delicious baked goods. Every last child in the room drops his or her colored pencil or calculator or loom or whatever and squeals in delight. Then hell, they’ve swarmed the damn door like tiny flesh-eating dinosaurs composognathuses swarm humans in Michael Crichton’s The Lost World, and in a matter of seconds everyone is covered in frosting and singing and laughing and has raised the birthday kid onto their shoulders and is parading him around the room like some fucking Purple Heart recipient and for a shining moment school is a bigass party. All thanks to the birthday kid.

But when you're a summer baby, you grow up and no one ever hoists you to their shoulders in respect and admiration cause it’s your birthday. Sure you have a party over the summer, but Ned and Matt and half the other kids you’d invite are away at some lake with fish that bite your ankles but you can waterski there. Sure your family’s there, but most of them are way younger or way older and while it’s heartwarming it’s just not that cool. Sure the party’s scheduled to be at the Butterfly Place, but what comfort are butterflies with only a single RSVP not counting your brother?

One thing’s for sure: you don’t get to stop the flow of a school day and have fucking delicious treats. You never get to be the hero.

So in self-preservation, as you cry yourself to sleep, softly, you think, "Someday when I'm a grownup, I won't have summer vacation. I will work year-round, and my mom will bring in popsicles or cupcakes (depending on the weather) to my workplace [ie, my co-workers will celebrate my birthday] and I will finally be celebrated!"

But it’s recently come to my attention that even if your summer birthday is on the calendar at your office, co-workers sometimes forget your birthday anyways. This absolutely bowls me over. After years of struggle and strife? Decades of being undervalued? I’m dead-ass: summer babies, we’re not taking this shit anymore. Who the crap do they think they are? We have to arm ourselves against this shitfest and get redemption – vengeance, even! – while we simultaneously prepare ourselves to reward benevolent co-workers who remember our birthdays.

Here’s what you do, summer baby. On the eve of your birthday, make both of the following recipes and bring them both to work in a cooler. If your coworkers remember your birthday – if they say something at lunch, or get you a cake, or even just mention something while passing your desk – they will be rewarded. You graciously bellow, “Thank you, kind brothers and sisters! To celebrate, I’ve brought a delicious treat for us all to share!” and distribute the first recipe. Laugh, be merry, and be the hero you always wanted to be (and were on the inside the whole time, summer baby; I KNOW IT!!).

If you have waited until 4:45 and your co-workers have still not acknowledged your birthday, call everyone together in a conference room or some shit, I don’t know how offices work, I’ve only been a teacher or museum educator so shut up. Announce, “Hi, everyone, thanks for coming. I know it’s almost time to go, but in honor of my birthday, I wanted to send you home with a delicious and refreshing treat. It sure is hotter’n hell out there!” [Laughter, merry sounds] Then, distribute the second recipe. Everyone will smile sheepishly, raise/knit their brows, and say “Thanks so much, I’m so sorry I forgot your birthday, thanks for doing something so nice for us anyways.” Make sure you’ve packed your things are effing ready to go and promptly exit before anyone takes a lick and becomes truly sorry they forgot your birthday.

Popsicles (adapted from Molly Wizenberg’s recipe)

2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt (if you work with mainly fat people do yourself and everyone else a favor and use non-fat yogurt)

2 cups fresh or frozen raspberries

¾ cup sugar

1 tsp. lemon juice

This is so freaking easy, I love it: blend everything in a blender until it’s smooth. If you don’t have a blender, like me, chew everything in batches and deposit it in a bowl until you’ve worked through the whole lot of it. Put the mixture through a strainer or a windowscreen would work fine too. Throw away the seeds and lumpy bits. Split up the silky-smooth mixture evenly amongst whatever you want to use for molds. Freeze for 20-30 minutes, then stick in the popsicle sticks of your choice. Then freeze’em till they’re hard and you’re done!

To get ‘em out of the damn molds, run them under tepid water and slide them out.

Popsickles (adapted from Molly Wizenberg’s recipe)

2 cups beef stock

1 cup squid

1 cup eggs (raw; this should be about 4 eggs)

¾ cup salt

1 tsp. paprika

Follow same directions as above. Feel free to get creative. Freeze an insect in each pop if you like, Jurassic Park bug-in-the-amber style.