The Greatest Birthday Gift

Desk lamps: The birthday present
of champions!

I will not tell you when my birthday is for obvious reasons, but I have video document evidence of myself on my actual 8th birthday tossing aside clothes, games, and then virtually flying into pure elation hysterics over getting a desk lamp. This was the home movie I saw years back where I throw aside a birthday card to get to the present, only to be redirected back to the card. "You got to read the card!" "Read the card first!" 

Of course, who can forget having to be told to stop and "read the card" when you're in the middle of tearing open presents? Your eyes fixate on those words you can barely read and yet still find their way back to the new game or toy sitting on standby, waiting for you to decide when enough "card time" was enough, especially with everyone watching you "stare at it." I was all like "Are they still looking? Screw this... can I just put it down now? What's in that box?"

So once that duty was over it was on to the presents, apparently I had my heart set on a desk lamp that year for some reason because my eyes just blew open wide with amazement at this ordinary white desk lamp and I just couldn't stop talking about it. Even long after, I can be seen very visibly sneaking peaks at this desk lamp. Now if that reveals anything about me, it's that my excitement threshold for the mundane has probably always been exceedingly low.

The major thing I remember about that desk lamp was it was white all over (like the picture) and I ended up putting a green light-bulb in it so that all those late nights would be lit in a green glaze, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. This was the case until the early morning when my milk looked like orange juice (I shouldn't have to explain how eyes work). Red had always been my favorite color, but I think I blasted green into my brain so many nights that green just took over. How groovy was it that I got to spray our bedroom green every night as I crawled into that top bunk (much to my brother's chagrin down below)?

Even today if you saw the way I live, you'd say this guy is all about green. Not only is this time-waster of a site decked out in green, but I even have green sheets and towels (yes, I bought them for college). My walls are green. My desktop is green. I even like green tea. And I guess I have my 8th year of life, and one very funky birthday present, to thank for it. You know what else is green? No, not money. The Klingon Bird of Prey!