After a good friend of mine heard part of my Congratulations on your marriage column read aloud at what I didn’t know was going to be a wedding shower when it actually was wedding shower wedding shower she wanted to have a specialized letter for her birthday. So here it is.

Before that though, I’d like to point out the fact that I hope I never ever ever have to attend another wedding shower in my whole life… well, besides the one for the girl I will marry someday. That’ll be fine.

Buon Compleanno. Feliz cumpleaños. С Днем Рождения. Happy Birthday. 01001000011000010111000001110000011110010010000001000010011 0100101110010011101000110100001100100011000010111100100101110 There are so many different ways to say it. As I began to complicate how I would say happy birthday to you I was faced with a difficult decision. Birds or fish? I went with neither. Seriously though, after I tell you what my options were I'll let you guess which one I decided to go with. The list is right below this line (followed by a blank line).

• A very generic, boring, and noisy e-card (Britney Spears singing Oops I did it again)
• A semi-funny snail mail card with an old person on it that says "Gee wiz, this year there is one more candle on your cake than last year. What a shocker."
• A highly-customized really really funny letter. (in my opinion anyway... I did write it after all)

Birthdays are often a time of reflection. Especially if you live near a good sized body of water or plan on vacationing near one on your birthday. I’d like to tell you a story about my half birthday this year (Sept. 12th). Half birthdays are often a time of half-reflections. Don’t worry about thinking about that just now though. You may get confused. Instead, think about this: if you stand in front of a mirror, you see yourself. That is, unless your eyes are closed, you’re facing the other way, or you’re looking through a hole in one of those cardboard thingies that makes you look like Dave Barry in boxers. In the last example, you will see your face on the body of Dave Barry in boxers. For the benefit of everyone everywhere, we won’t use that for our experiment. For this experiment we will assume you are pressing your face on the mirror. The purpose of this is to, of course, see what it feels like for birds to slam into windows on a bright shiny day on which the window acts like a nice mirror. To get better aquainted with how the birds must feel please slam your head against the mirror repeatedly. A window on a bright shiny day can be substituted for a mirror should you so desire.

Do you think birds realize they’re about to hit something solid? Do you think they close their eyes? Did you close your eyes when banging your head on the mirror? Why? So it wouldn’t hurt as bad? Jerry Seinfield once commented that it’s amazing that the birds never seem to try to dodge the bird flying right back at them. Amazing, I know. I try to dodge myself each time I hit the mirror. The guy in the mirror is just too quick. I hope you have better luck than I did.

Seriously though, I bet you’re wondering how this could have anything to do with my half birthday. Well, I don’t actually remember a dang thing from my half birthday this year. I don’t drink and I don’t do drugs so the cause of this is baffling. Actually, it’s probably just because it was boring. So I like to think that it went something like this:

• Wake up
• Go to bathroom
• Look in mirror
• Slam head against mirror repeatedly in an attempt to know what it feels like for birds or maybe even fish in aquariums with mirrors.
• Eat eggs and goldfish (crackers) to show how appreciative of birds and fish I really am.
• Go back to bed
• Wake up next day

So on this, your birthday, or whenever you may be reading this, please, know, that I like, to use, commas ,,, a lot,

Do you think birds with A.D.D. (Accidental oops-I’m-upside-Down Disorder) ever accidentally fly into lakes or the ocean because the sky is reflected in it? How would we know if they did? Is that how eagles, osprey, and the like figured out that they could catch fish? It might have gone something like this: “Too bad that funny looking rabbit is underneath ground that appears to be moving. Oh, wait! The sky is all of the sudden down there! I must be upside down!!” Splash. You gotta wonder.

Happy birthday!