Law School Memory #5: Brian's Birthday

We ran into a problem or two or three setting up Brian's birthday. First, his parents were coming over from Colorado that day so it was doubtful that we were going to do something that night or over the weekend. Second, he told us he had an errand to run after his early morning class and would miss the rest of the day up until Torts in the afternoon before heading back home to clean up for his parents' arrival.

Annie, PeShawn and I were walking towards the gift shop across from our school to pick up a card and what would be a "It's a Boy!" balloon-on-a-stick for Annie to give to Brian during the early morning class. As we were making our way, we were talking about what a shame it was that we couldn't do something right away for Brian's birthday. That's when I quipped, "Well we could just throw him a party during Torts." At the time I meant it as a joke -- therefore I had quipped not said -- but Annie seemed taken by the idea and it was decided then that we would throw Brian a surprise "party" just before the start of Torts class.

That was the plan before the unsuspecting and very uncooperative Brian threw us yet another curve by telling us in the morning that he wasn't going to be running his errand as planned after all. By then we were pretty much dead set on doing the party in Torts so we came up with the alternative of Annie and Shawn taking Brian to the Tea Room for lunch while Benilda, Rita and I got everything together.

During lunch we headed over to Ralph's purposefully breaking the picket line 'cuz honestly there was nowhere else to go except maybe Rite Aid, Walgreen's or one of many shops nearby but really where would the fun have been in that? We ended up buying a "Happy Birthday" paper tablecloth, a pink paper set of plates featuring a princess, those party favors that you blow, a helium balloon with the words "Smile, It's Your Birthday!", a chocolate cake and candles spelling out Happy Birthday.

Leaving the parking lot, one of those picketing came up to Rita's car and gave us a lecture about why we shouldn't be shopping at Ralph's and that we should find another place to go shopping which led me to say, "Ok, we'll go right across the street next time to Vons."

We get back to school and set the whole thing up with RaShawn by spreading the tablecloth across his desk space and that of the three other's next to him, taping the tablecloth to the desk so he couldn't remove it easily, tied the balloon to his chair, set the plates and party favors out and placed the candles on the cake.

Now I must confess, I didn't originally think of it as being sweet, I was going instead for the joke. But people said what we were doing was sweet so I guess it was sweet.

Ten minutes before class, Brian walks in and is genuinely surprised and a bit embarrassed by it all. He ended up taking about a half dozen blows to blow out the candles. And what was a little odd, but sweet of them, were all these classmates of ours, that he probably didn't know all that well, wishing him a happy birthday. Brian thanked us all at the time and thanked us again with a really sappy e-mail which I have yet to give him a hard time about.

That was the genesis of the whole "let's embarrass the birthday celebrant just before class starts" thing.