Happy Unbirthday

One damp afternoon in the mid-90s, my mother slotted a cassette tape into our kitchen radio and pressed the giant ‘Play’ button home with a clunk.

It was a story about a little caterpillar called Clive who was having a shitty day. Clive was sad because he had nobody to play with.

Along comes a painfully cheery Butterfly called Bertha, who tries to lift his spirits by pointing out all the lovely things that happened that day, how lucky he is to be alive…yadda yadda.

But Clive doesn’t care. He is enjoying being a miserable sod.

His Eeyore is wallowing.

Eventually, he reveals the real reason he’s sad: he didn’t get invited to a birthday party.

Hardly surprising, what with him being so miserable.

But Bertha isn’t fazed for a moment.

“You don’t need a birthday to have a party,” she says, “because today is your unbirthday.”

And before you could say, “that’s not the ending,” they were up to their eyeballs in tequila and horse tranquilizer.

To days we were born on or otherwise — all worth celebrating!