With Friends Like These...

Someone taped the above to a garbage can at the train station. I'm sure that Patsy, whoever the hell she is, is thrilled to death having the whole town know she's over the hill.

And was that the most flattering picture they could find of Patsy? She looks like she's about to fight a mountain lion for her dinner.

Nevertheless, it's still one step above having the restaurant waitstaff sing "Happy Birthday" to you, although judging from the type of friend poor Patsy seems to cultivate, I'm sure she had to suffer through that shit, too. Not like I should be complaining, though. Last January, Erica and Steve took me out for my birthday, but the four birthdays before that were celebrated alone, with a pile of homework. Now, the year before that, my eighteenth birthday, my friends threw me a surprise party at our local TGI Friday's, and I think it's worth remembering the good old days at TGI Friday's when those irritating chipper waiters and waitresses were covered head-to-toe in inane "pieces of flair."

Way back then, in 1999, if you were the TGI Friday's birthday boy, they didn't sing "Happy Birthday" to you. They made you stand on a chair and balance a champagne flute full of ketchup and whip cream on your head while they sang "Happy Birthday" to you. So if there's a lesson here, it's that no matter how well your friends humiliate you on your birthday, they could always do worse.