Birthday: You’re doing it wrong

I turned 25 this month. Ever since my birthday, I’ve been dealing with the same awkward question:

“How was your birthday?!” 

Well… to put it simply… I did it wrong. 

I have a long-running streak of bad luck when it comes to celebrations or holidays. For instance, I spent last Christmas at work. If my family hadn’t been willing to delay opening gifts, the highlight of the day would have been seeing a cute guy at the gas station. 

New Year’s Day is my archnemesis – I’ve never had a good one. The movies always make it look so fun, with romance, mystery, excitement, and fireworks. Mine mostly consist of my family sitting around looking tired or being unable to watch TV because someone is sleeping in the TV room. 

Even the once, when New Year’s involved a boy, I still somehow ended up not seeing him and instead acting as chauffer for a friend and someone I didn’t know. Lame. 

My most memorable New Year’s involved a nice bout of pink eye. I’m not kidding here – I woke up early for drill team practice and glanced in the mirror to find this: 

You can understand why my celebration standards are low. 

Now, to be fair, birthdays become lamer the older you get. It’s a rule of aging. Because most of my friends are married and busy, I didn’t expect my birthday to be much. My family fed me cake and sang to me earlier in the week, so that was my main celebration. 

(Although even that got messed up because I had to run back to work so quickly that I left the cake behind, which means my brothers ate my birthday cake… not that I’m bitter…) 

At best, I thought my birthday would involve sitting at home and doing nothing. That wouldn’t have been bad. In fact, that would've been FAR better than what I ended up doing. The birthday I actually experienced left me puzzling over how to say that my birthday was great without lying… 

Because it wasn’t great... It wasn't even good.

Although my birthday fell on a Friday, the fun began the Tuesday before, when a girl backed her truck into my car. My car held up surprisingly well, considering how ghetto it is. The cover over my headlight is smashed, and there’s a big dent in the poo-brown paint. No biggie.  

BUT  

For the next few days, my car felt weird, and I began to worry that the fender bender had damaged the axle or the wheel well. Finally, I decided to take it to the shop. Since Friday (my birthday) was my day off, I knew it would have to be then. Taking a car to the shop on your birthday isn’t a big deal, but it did mean that I found myself downtown at 9 a.m. without anything to do (nothing is open at 9 a.m.) and no car with which to do it. 

Therefore, over the next 6 hours, I did the following things: 

Sat at work

Moaned about my car 

Wrote a newspaper article

Moaned about my car 

Read all the news

Moaned about my car

Caught up on blogs (update yours, Miss Olsen!)

Moaned about my car 

In other words, it was like any other day at work, except with the added bonus of car moaning. 

Finally Big O called. They informed me that my car was fine and that it would be done within the next 45 minutes. They also informed me that I had gotten a parking ticket. 

When I got to Big O, I paid them $74 for a tire alignment – and they paid me $15 for my parking ticket – and then I waited for them to roll my car out of the garage. However, soon the boss came back in and said this: 

“So… There’s a problem… You know how I said there wasn’t anything wrong with it? Um… There’s something wrong with it.” 

Yeah. That’s why I brought it in. 

It turns out that one of the inner bolts on the car had snapped in half. The other one was rusted almost all the way through. The bolts – rather critically – hold the front of the car on. 

According to Ford (should you want the more technical description) “the rear lower subframe mount plate nut can experience stress corrosion cracking if subjected to long term exposure to road salts. This can result in fracture and loss of the structural integrity of the subframe mount attachment. Detachment of the body mounts at the rear corners of the subframe, which supports the engine and transmission, allows the rear corners of the subframe to drop. If both rear corners drop, steering would become suddenly very difficult, affecting vehicle control and increasing the risk of a crash.” 

Translation: If the front of your car falls off, you will crash. 

The nice Big O man refunded my $74 and then estimated the repair would cost $450. He also said he had only seen that problem once, and they took that car straight to the dump. Wonderful. 

I drove home at roughly the speed of a 99-year-old grandma (how would you drive, if the front of your car was being held on by ½ of a rusty bolt?) and sat around waiting for my mom to give me instructions on what to do next. Would I drive the 2 ½ hours home in the death-on-wheels car? Would the parents tell me to get it fixed? Would I have to (gasp!) take public transportation?! 

(In all seriousness, it's a realistic concern for a girl who works night shifts.) 

To sum up my birthday: 

1. Spent 6 hours sitting at work despite it being my day off

2. Got my first-ever parking ticket (first-ever ticket of any sort, thank you.) 

3. Discovered I’d been driving like a maniac while ½ of a bolt away from death.

4. Found myself weighing the costs: $450 vs. a fiery demise. 

5. Sat in my room and wished I could drive somewhere and buy stuff to make myself feel better – but since I didn’t want to spend my birthday with the Grim Reaper, I stayed put.

So, to all of you people who wondered how my birthday went… 

Um… It was good.

P.S. The story doesn’t end badly, though. Due to a valiant phone effort by my mom and a clever dad who looked up Ford recalls, Ford paid for the repair. We had to convince them it snows in Utah (“Greatest Snow on Earth” license plates? The 2002 Winter Olympics? The opening scene of “National Treasure”?! DOES NONE OF THIS MEAN ANYTHING?!) And my mom got me a gift certificate to Shabby Apple, which finally showed up on October 20 and was spent on these:

Also, the Big O guys were lovely. If you’re near 178 East South Temple and need tires, I’d recommend them. Two fellows from work kindly gave me rides when the car was in the shop, and the Larry H. Miller Ford guys gave me a drink token and two rides in a Ford Flex. Yee-haw.

I'm not upset about my birthday – it's more funny than anything. Besides, there's always next year.