For those of you keeping track, I’ll be 50 in a little less than 3 months.  Scroll all the way to the bottom of this site and you’ll see exactly how far away we are.

Just don’t do it before you’re done reading today’s brilliant dispatch.

As we approach the blessed day, I’m reminded of the events of my birthday 6 years ago.  My son was graduating high school, and my side of the family converged upon the compound to celebrate the boy’s achievement.  During that time, my brother took a picture of the back of my fleshy melon and likened it to a particular scene in one of the greatest movies of all time.   During those days when everyone was in town, I had the rare occasion to strap on the feedbag with both of my parents, my brother, my wife, and my kids.

In fact it was at the meal that my brother reminded us of the statement, “That’s one…..”

You see, my dear reader, in our formative days where we were being trained to be fine and upstanding gentlemen in our eventual adulthood, Mom would menace my brother and me with a three count whenever our behavior didn’t live up to the stringent standards of a fine and upstanding gentleman.  The menacing would begin with an admonishment that we had traversed the first third of our pathway to a meeting with the orange paddle, which doubled as a 3 foot section of Hot Wheels track.

That same night I got a candid picture of all of us at the table, and timed it as such that my dear beloved Mom is featured chewing on a rib with a stunned look on her face as she’s just realized what the eldest of her fine and upstanding sons was doing in the middle of a Red Robin that night.

I’m pretty sure she started a count on me, but I digress.  Let’s get back to the events around my 44th birthday.

Parallel to events around my son’s graduation, I can tell you that New York Mets pitcher Johan Santana pitched a no-hitter against the St. Louis Cardinals on that Friday.

Along with yours truly, the likes of Pat Boone, Marilyn Monroe, Andy Griffith, Morgan Freeman, Tom Holland, Heidi Klum, David Berkowitz, Ronnie Wood, and Brigham Young had their birthdays marked in one way or another.

Tough crowd, I know.

A little closer to home, the Texas Department of Public Safety suffered a statewide crash within their computer system.  I know this because like an idiot, I was in the middle of one of their offices on the day my driver’s license expired.  That year, I had to renew it in person instead of doing it on line, and I waited until the last minute to make it happen.

I spent the whole day in the office donning a new customized shirt which had my logo on it, staring at a video monitor which featured a misspelled version of the word “queue”.   It’s always nice to see grammar boo-boo’s in offices which are funded by my tax dollars.

None the less, it will be necessary for me to darken the door of the Texas DPS once again for a renewal.  This year it will be different.

I’m on staycation this week, so I’m doing it now, well before I have too.

The Texas DPS has opened a new office closer to the house, and they’ve streamlined a lot of their processes in the six years since that day in 2012 when I just sat there wishing acute intestinal cramping on the savant who couldn’t get the system rebooted.

For what it’s worth, the state normally wouldn’t require me to darken their door this time around if it weren’t for the fact that I spent the last half of January getting my vision fixed.  As such, I’ll need to take a vision test so as to remove the lens restriction from my driver’s license.

Six years ago when I sat in that office, I was in a pretty good mood.  It was my birthday and I had just gotten the best birthday present earlier in those customized shirts that Wifey had made for me.

Six years later, I have one kid out of college and another one leaving at the end of this year.  I’ve got two dogs that don’t get along.  My skin is still a little itchy from the dry winter.  I’ve had propofol administered on three different occasions in the last 6 months so that various devices could be inserted either in my eye sockets or my butt.  It won’t be my birthday, and I will have no particular reason to be euphoric over a birthday gift, a family reunion, or a chance to take a guerilla picture of Mom.  In fact the only good reason for being happy to be there is the fact that vision is better now, and the only eyewear I need while driving is whatever pair of sunglasses I feel makes me look cool while driving a crossover.

With that being said, it’s a safe assumption that I won’t be very forgiving about getting caught up in an unending que again.