Afraid for Your Birthday

Here’s another river story with nothing to do with boats or rivers. This story is about a man afraid of his birthday. It took place at a Super Bowl party at my neighbor’s house. The Baltimore Ravens were playing the New York Giants and the Ravens were destroying New York.

It was 2001 and Aerosmith was the halftime act and the television commercials were really good. Our neighbors put out quite a spread. There was a whole table full of munchies and treats. The highlight was three extra-large pizzas. My wife, Carrie and I showed up with an appetizer and some beer. Beer was in abundance. Some of the guests were slipping into cocktails.

Our neighbors were new to the river and brought a lot of their friends from their previous neighborhood to the party. I counted 22 guests figuring that I knew about half of them.

My wife had lost interest in the game much like the Giants did and started scanning the room for a fresh conversation. I found myself holding an empty beer bottle and staring off blankly at the TV. I too found the game slow and only waiting around for commercials to reappear.

That’s when we met Tim. Tim was our neighbor’s good friend and lived next to him before the move to the river. We struck up a light conversation while all three of us were staring at the game on TV. He had a nice personality and was easy to talk to. We chatted for quite some time. I began to notice that he was feeling stressed when we switched the conversation to anything-new-coming-up for a new topic. Leaving not much more to talk about than the weather.

I had a vacation with my wife just about a month away and carried on about that for a while. But when I brought the conversation back around to him, his forehead scrunched up and his eyes darted away from us. I thought maybe I should change topic but a moment later he cleared his throat and looked back at us.

“My birthday is coming up in two weeks” he said, “That’s great! Congratulations” Carrie smiled back at him. “Yeah, I guess so” he painfully uttered. “How old, if you don’t mind me asking?” I returned. “Fifty. I’ll be fifty” “Wow! That’s a big one” I tried to brighten him up, but he was getting more nervous now. “Aren’t you happy about it?” my wife asked. I found the whole conversation quite odd.

“You see”, he began, “My grandfather died on his fiftieth birthday. My father also died on his fiftieth birthday.” “WHAT?” I couldn’t help myself. I was stunned. “That is crazy” We listened with a sympathetic ear. “Yeah, that’s the whole thing. I’m afraid of turning 50.” He admitted. “That’s crazy man. That is a really bizarre story, but you don’t have anything to fret over” I said. “I guess you are right.” he admitted with effort. Suddenly the Ravens scored another touchdown and the room went into a frenzy with popcorn flying in the air. And just like that, the conversation was over. I liked Tim, but felt sorry for his senseless fear.

The game was over. Final score was 34 to 7. The Giants were a no-show. We lived next door so the walk back was cold, but it was quick. As Carrie and I were settling in with an earlier fire still smoldering in the fireplace, we talked about Tim’s story. We found the whole story quite bizarre. Our conversation moved on and about an hour later I put the fire out and we turned in for bed.

Two weeks later on his birthday, Tim was found dead in his home, dead from a heart attack just like his father and grandfather.

Tim has a son.

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