32 Years Young

Throughout my life, my mom has made it a practice of telling people her wrong age. I'm not at liberty to say what age she really as, but throughout my years as a young child, she would often tell people she was sixteen. I believed it until I was about six, when Matt pointed out that if Mom were sixteen, she would have started reproducing at eight. He also mentioned how she's been perpetually "sixteen" throughout the duration of our lives up until that point and there would have had to come a time where she would have turned seventeen. This made sense to me, as I had taken for granted that she would have had to have aged within this time.

I remember one of Mom's birthdays when Matt called the three brothers together to discuss a scheme that he was wanting to hatch. It seemed that Mom's favorite radio station, KUDL, would announce birthday greetings to specific listeners on their morning show. The plan was to call the station that morning and request an on-air "happy birthday to Judy Teel, who is sixteen today. From her three sons." It was a genius plan, mixing an actual birthday greeting with the irony that she was turning sixteen all over again. Not to mention that she would have "three sons" requesting the greeting.

Matt made the call. Then we waited. With any luck, she would hear the message as she drove us to school, but the announcement did not come. As we climbed out of the car in front of the school, Matt encourage Mom to continue listening to the radio as long as possible (for reasons unknown to her). We arrived home that night to discover that the DJ never announced Mom's birthday. We were all disappointed, and told her of our failed plan. She laughed and thanked us for our efforts. It wasn't until a few years later that we realized that the DJ more than likely never announced the birthday greeting, assuming it was a crank call (sixteen year old mother=three kids. Pretty common now, but unheard of in the early eighties).

The age rouse went on for several years afterward. Finally, on one particular birthday, Matt pointed out that he was seventeen years old and, therefore, physically unable to be her biological son. Mom agreed and decided to bump her age up to 32. Now, several years later, she's still 32. And it was last night, when Mom mentioned to our waitress that she was 32, that it occurred to me that her youngest son had just turned that very age. I didn't have the heart to say anything though.

Happy 32nd birthday, Mom. We love you.