A very merry unbirthday to you...

The following was to be posted Jan. 28. Unfortunately we were not anywhere near an internet source at the time. So this is a Very Merry Late Unbirthday to you...

He absolutely hates birthdays, so I need to tell everyone that John Boy’s birthday, which would have been today, has been cancelled.

So remember: Today, like yesterday and tomorrow, is not John Boy’s birthday anymore.

So here is the post I would have posted if today had, in fact, been John Boy’s birthday, which it is not.

Of the three of us, Dark Garden, John Boy and me, John Boy is the oldest. In spite of this, last summer at the wine festival he got carded. Then had the nerve to draw attention to it.

Because he is the oldest, I have no recollection of the day he was born, since I wasn’t born yet because he is older than me.

Family legend has it that the sun was shining and all the world lifted its voice in song at the moment of his birth. My mother’s sisters immediately fell upon him and whisked him away on vacations and one of them signed her car over to him.

Another family legend has it that when the aunts took him to see the Broadway show Bye, Bye Birdie, John Boy brushed against Dick Van Dyke’s arm. This is confirmed in Dick Van Dyke’s memoirs: “Was touched by John Boy today. I am renewed.”

When John Boy was a child he had to gather dew drops off the leaves to keep from dying of thirst. The rest of us just used the kitchen faucet.

When I was four and John Boy was eight, our family room had two carpets, one beige and one red. We would pretend that the red carpet was hell and the beige carpet was heaven. My cousin was the devil and John Boy was, of course, God (let’s not even go into the casting of this…). The devil had my stuffed animals and God had my doll and the record player. I had to decide between the two. Now that I think of it, this was a rather disturbing game for kids to be playing…

When Dark Garden was a baby, John Boy used to take him into his bedroom and lay him in front of his stereo speakers and blast the Beatles at him. In the summer, it was our job to make Dark Garden take his nap, so John Boy devised this method of us sitting on the swings with DG in his carriage and our swinging would roll the carriage back and forth. And we would sing to him. In harmony. Sort of. I don’t recall him ever falling asleep. Whiplash, maybe…

One time he endured 5 games Racko! to get me to play one game of Civil War 1863 and he had to let me be the North. Another time he played Mousetrap ten times to get me to play Battle Cry.

Because of John Boy, instead of going to parks and stuff, my family visited battlefields. There are 15, 347 pictures of us next to cannons, straddling cannons, pretending to load cannons and looking into the mouths of cannons. .I thought everybody had a favorite war, like they had a favorite color or song (I chose the Revolutionary War because I figured it wasn’t taken yet).

John Boy goes on record for having the singular most boring diary in the history of mankind. Almost all his entries read like this: Got up. Had Wheaties for breakfast. Went to school. Came home. Tonight was steak night. Did homework. Went to bed 9:00.

He has also broken the record for taking the longest time to eat a meal.

John Boy is probably the most personable one among us. Everyone likes John Boy. Even though John Boy hates people. You can’t tell, but people annoy him. He likes individuals enough, it’s just people he can’t stand. In his world, this makes sense.

So go visit John Boy at his blog and then he will feel obligated to keep posting on it, which he will complain about. He’s not scary like Dark Garden. He’s not wordy like me.

Probably because he’s older.