Happy Birthday to Someone Totally Unrelated to Anyone Here

Normally the one of the qualifications for getting a birthday blog is to be a member of this family. But we’ll make an exception this time for Heir I, who does not want it to get around that we are related to him.

So even though he’s not a relative, Heir 1 has to endure gets a birthday blog.

Some random facts you may not know about Heir 1 (who is currently moaning):

• He was a bit of a celebrity when he was a baby since the newspaper I worked for dressed him in a tux and used him as the cover photo for a special section on weddings. Fortunately, for his sake, I haven’t unpacked that picture yet.
• When he was a toddler, even in the winter I had to hang clothes on the line since we didn’t have a dryer. So I would bundle him up in a snowsuit and take him out with me. The clothesline was on the side of a hill. I used to tell him to hang on to a tree because if he stumbled, his suit was so bulky and he’d just continue rolling down the hill until he hit a fence. As usual, he had to find out for himself…
• He once saved the life of Heir 2 by informing us that Heir 2 had a Lite Brite in his nose. It wasn’t until years later we found out Heir 1 put it there in the first place.

• 

  Heir 1 is an extremely talented writer who wants to, for some inexplicable reason, become a bartender. I think it’s because that way he thinks he can move to the Caribbean and immediately get a job. And drunk.
• Heir 1 hated to get helium balloons when he was little. He was okay until we got home at which point he’d make up put them outside. He thought they were following him.
• Heir 1 is suspicious of the Amish too.

Of course, I'm not sure of any of this because Heir 1 and I are not in any way related. Neither is he related to Dirtman or Heir 2. He is a rock. He is an iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisland.

Heir 1 is 18 today and his over-18 friends are treating him to something I find personally offensive, but is absolutely legal – a strip club (specifically, a West Virginia strip club – how trashy can you get?). And so here is my first hurdle in watching him do something reprehensible to me and keeping my mouth shut.

I do this not because he won’t listen if I forbid it, not because I’m passive/aggressive, but because it’s my job to let him go and let him fall and let him make stupid decisions and live with the consequences.

And I do this because his draft card arrived in the mail yesterday.