Birthday Alarm (which I once used to remind me about birthdays of people with whom I did business) tells me I share my birthday with Dizzy Gillespie, Carrie Fisher, Alfred Nobel, and Benjamin Netanyahu. I should feel honored to be in the company of such astonishing talent and political prominence, because critical acclaim and deserved fame and leadership must course through my veins like blood pumps from brave hearts…
…but wait. I share my birthday with Kim Kardashian and Judge Judy Sheindlin, as well. So, could it be that arrogance and self-serving buffoonery also inhabit my DNA? Does my tenuous thread of connection with people who happened to be born on the same day and the same month as I, though in different years, suggest I might share attributes with those people?
I think not. I’ll take it a step further; I am as close to certain there is no connection as is possible. The very idea that any connection exists between personality traits and one’s birthday is,to put it politely, delusional. Am I absolutely certain? Of course not. I’m not absolutely certain my entire lifetime is not simply a dream taking place in someone else’s mind during that person’s fitful eight hours of sleep; but I’d be more than moderately surprised to learn that were true. Now, on to what’s real about this birthday, now that I’ve reached the halfway point in my life (I have sixty-three years remaining; I peered through a crack in the space-time continuum to witness my demise at age 126).
My favorite wife suggested this morning that we go out to celebrate my birthday with breakfast at The Quarter Cafe, in Hot Springs. We had not been there before and I’ve wanted to go (my intent has been to go at lunchtime, but I’m not one to decline an out-of-house breakfast experience), so I accepted. Mi esposa hermosa ordered Country Ham Benedict, consisting of thick slices of ham served atop a biscuit with poached eggs. She chose sausage gravy for one of her eggs and hollandaise sauce for the other. Decadence on steroids! I selected the Creole Slammer, which consisted of eggs (I asked for poached), crawfish étouffée, a biscuit, and a choice of breakfast potatoes, cheese grits, or fresh fruit; I chose the potatoes (though I wanted the grits…I don’t know what came over me).
Fruit makes it healthy.
Étouffée for breakfast!
