Happy Birthday, Mom!

(that's not my mom)

Phew. If it wasn't for a thread on a local message board concerning today being the birthday of der Fuhrer I would never have remembered that it was also my mother's birthday. A dash to the phone and a quick call in which I leave a short birthday wish on their answering machine ("I hope I called before my brother did!") and all is well and good for another year.

Worst. Son. Ever.

The fact that my mother shares the birthday with perhaps the most hated man in history was not lost on me growing up. Plenty of teenage homemade Christmas cards featuring variations of the short, square moustache are surely gathering dust in some box somewhere alongside baby toys I'll probably never need and "What I want to be when I grow up" essays written in my adolescence that I'll never live up to.