Best Birthday Stories - The one with the glass

So in honor of my impending 27th birthday (which is the official beginning of being Old) I am counting down some of my favorite birthday stories.  Best does not necessarily mean happiest or most special, but really that they are the stories that have stuck with me throughout the years.

I had exactly three Redmond's birthdays - at the middle one when I turned 24, I wore a flower print dress and my hair looked amazing. 

We started with champagne at the Ashland apartment and then moved to the temple of doom.  Needless to say (because its Redmonds) we were overserved.  About a month before my birthday, I decided that Crown Royal and ginger ale was my signature drink...and I haven't had one since.

Once I started throwing maraschino cherries at the waitstaff it was time to go. But going home? Hell no - that's for 25 year-olds.  So we went to Baby Atlas which is the best and occasionally worst place to have a dance party.  Its one of the biggest crap shoots in the city.

On that particular night, it was about half an hour from being a crime scene. Within 10 minutes, 4 beer bottles had been shattered precariously close to my feet.

You would think that since it was the end of October, I would have had shoes on to cover my feet from the shards of glass flying everywhere. But if you knew me, you would know that I had flip flops on, because I am a child.

So rather than having a dance party with my friends, I sat upstairs in Matilda's and let Boyfriend (who was still trying to woo me at this point) pick glass of my (essentially) bare feet.  C'est tres romantic.

Once everyone realized what kind of clusterbomb Baby Atlas was on that particular night, we decided to go to Clark's for some "gee.dee hashbrowns." Once we got there, Maimees friend who was in town for the weekend stormed out, for reasons unknown to all of us, and decided he was going to walk the the three miles back to her apartment (despite not having any idea where he was or where her apartment was).

That was pretty lame, but then there were chicken fingers and a side of pancakes and I felt better, even though there was probably still some glass in my foot.

Then it was time to go home, because even at the tender, young age of 24, I could only handle so much physical pain, whiskey and buzz killing.

Once we got back to the apartment on Ashland, I was trying to take off my coat, which was clearly a task I was not up to, as in the process, I managed to knock a champagne glass off the coffee table and break it into a million pieces.

To this day, I cannot quite figure out the physics of this particular maneuver and had Boyfriend not been there, I probably would have just put a note on the door, telling people it was there and left it until morning.  But while I lay on the couch talking simultaneously about how I was far too old and how I wish you could always eat chicken nuggets with maple syrup, Boyfriend cleaned up my mess (the first of many, to be sure) before putting me to bed.

This birthday was clearly a disaster, but it makes a good story and it was pretty much the last birthday of complete debauchery. AND, I found out later, a friend of a friend, hooked up with another friend of a friend that night after meeting at my party.  It was probably because of my hair (it really did look amazing).