A Guest Post by the Lovely Sarah Ockler

Happy Birthday, Zoe!!!

*confetti* *confetti* *confetti*

To celebrate Zoe's birthday, I'd like to share one of my best -- or maybe just craziest -- birthday stories ever. I'm not talking about the time when I was six and wanted to be the Lone Ranger so I wore a mask for an entire year, including to my own birthday party with my pink party dress...

PICTURE HERE

No. I'm talking about the year I turned 14. It was right before I started a new high school and I was super nervous that everyone would hate me and that I wouldn't make any new friends and even worse, that all of my old friends would be rockin' out without me just down the street, because although our new house wasn't that far from the old one, it was *right* over the school district line. Lame.

Anyway, Mom and Dad let me have a "friends only" birthday party with my old friends at the end of the summer, just before starting the new horrid school that I was definitely going to hate. I was allowed to invite both girls and boys. The girls would sleep over and the boys would be ushered out at a certain time and for the most part, my parents promised to leave us alone in the basement.

The night of the party, we listened to music, drank soda, ate chips and cake, and sat completely separated -- girls on one side, boys on the other, each group chatting and laughing at our own nervous little jokes.

Then someone uttered the magic words.

Spin.
The.
Bottle.

Thus ended the girl-boy separation for the evening!

We got together in a tight circle and began spinning. When a certain boy (let's call him, um, oh, I know... Cute Boy Who Shall Remain Nameless Because 20 Years Later He's Now My Facebook Friend And Wouldn't That Be Awkward if He Read This) took his spin, I closed my eyes and willed and hoped and prayed it would point to me. And it did. And every cell in my body started buzzing when Nameless Facebook Awkward smiled and looked at me and leaned across the middle of the circle. I mean, I had a crush on NFA for the entire year! And now, the night of my boy-girl birthday party, down in the basement of my new house that was just over the district line from my old school, NFA was about to kiss me! KISS me!! In front of everyone! And I thought, wow, life is so awesome, yet totally bittersweet because my crush will finally be requited but now I'm in a whole new school and how can 14-year-olds without cars handle long distance relationships and why didn't we play spin the bottle sooner and maybe everything would have turned out differently but it didn't so now I'll just have to make this one really passionate so he can never ever forget me and even though we won't be together, I can hopefully rest at peace in the knowledge that I will forever remain NFA's "One Who Got Away..."

But before I could ponder Cupid's cruelty for one more second, he did it. He put his hands lightly on the back of my neck and kissed me, soft and for just a few seconds on the lips, and I pretty much melted right into the chip dip.

I don't remember what any of my presents were or what time my parents finally kicked the boys out. I just knew that one minute I was completely buzzing and floating and dreaming about NFA's soft kiss, and the next minute...

...I was *freaking out* almost peeing my pants because, without the boys around for entertainment, the girls decided to break out the Ouija board and call forth the spirit of a drowned boy who also shall remain nameless -- not because he's my Facebook friend, but because part of me still believes we really *did* get in touch with the spirit of a dead boy and I want to be respectful. And truth be told I don't want to come that close to peeing my pants again. Anyway, we chatted with the boy's spirit and completely scared ourselves to the point that none of us would sleep for the next few days, and for many years after, we still couldn't say his name out loud without one of us screaming.

Sadly, my once-immutable passion for Nameless Facebook Awkward burned out a few weeks later. By burned out, I mean that he never called me back and then made up some lame excuse about babysitting his little sister when I invited him to the homecoming dance at my new school. Jerk.

Still. I'll always look back on that party as the craziest birthday -- the night of a thousand roller coaster emotions -- love and life and death and cake all converging in the basement of my new house to usher me swiftly into my 14th year.

Zoe, I wish you a wonderful, magical birthday filled with lots of love, happiness, and wishes come true. Um, minus the bottles and ghosts. :-)

XOXO
Sarah Ockler