How I Ruined My Daughter's Birthday

Newsletter 2020-06-01

Ruining a child’s birthday is more art than science. Last week was my masterpiece. As regular readers know, three of my kids have birthdays right on top of each other because my wife Lola and I are experts at family planning. Also, exactly nine months prior to this time of year is when our local liquor store has its best sales. So far, we’ve made it through two birthdays, with one more to go this week. The pandemic completely changed how we’re celebrating this year. Instead of throwing a big triple birthday party, we stayed home alone, and instead of going out to eat once for each kid, I went through the drive-thru three times. Not that that affected our children’s food choices. Every kid knows the greatest delicacy is literally any food that comes with a small plastic toy. I’ll take those Happy Meals to go.

With no people coming over, we didn’t have to spend weeks cleaning our house to pretend we’re civilized human beings. We’re staying in barbarian mode year-round. All Lola and I had…