"She's Cool Man!"

A few months back, a friend of mine was about to have her 22nd birthday but was less than enthused about it. Now, I'm of the belief that birthdays should be at least acknowledged if not celebrated. When I mentioned that her birthday was coming up, she insisted that she didn't really want to make a big deal of it because she felt like turning 22 made her feel really old.

This woman is actually only 28 years old.

She had an almost plausible explanation, since the majority of the people she hangs out with are freshmen and sophomores in college. As graduate students, my room mate and I are both significantly older than the majority of the people in that particular group of friends, so we know how that goes. But as guys, we know that we only get more distinguished looking as the years go by, while it's normally a sharp decline for women. See evidence below.

Both these people are roughly 50. Which one doesn't look like Skeletor?

And Madonna is said to "look good for her age". That's got to suck for all you women out there.

A 25 year old realizing her looks are fleeting.

I asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday, and she said she didn't want to do anything really. So naturally I told her that I would make a huge deal of her birthday. I started spouting off random ways to make a big deal of it, ranging from the mundane to the inane.

I said that I would follow her around all day bursting through the doors of her classes to yell "Happy Birthday!". Creating a bunch of graffiti around campus with her picture stating that it was her 22nd birthday. Arranging to have the dining hall staff come out with a cupcake and a candle on top, singing "Happy Birthday". Getting a skywriter's airplane to tell the whole city it was her birthday.

Have clowns follow her around, making balloon animals.

For some reason she freaked out, perhaps believing that I would actually do any of those things. So after some quick back-pedaling and promises not to make a big deal out of it on my part, we came to an agreement to just let it go.

I did not just let it go.

I decided that if I couldn't throw a surprise party, perhaps the next best thing would be a novelty style present. Now, when I say novelty, I don't mean a "can of snakes" or anything like that, I just mean a present that is more than just a regular gift.

"Surprise! It's actually filled with candy!"

I decided to create a treasure hunt sort of thing for her birthday present. I went around to local businesses and places on campus to ask it if would be cool for me to leave a clue with them for her to pick up as she worked through a series of hints and clues in order to reach the end and get her present.

After getting enough places and people to agree to help me, I started to think up some riddles and what not, and then had to find a way to leave the clues in such a way that she wouldn't be able to tell it was me right away. Given my fondness for arts and crafts (stop laughing, you don't know that I don't like those) and my knowledge of Batman villains (ie the Riddler), the solution was easy to come to.

Cut and paste letters together to make ransom note style clues.

Not sketchy... At all...

I wasn't sure what clues I was going to write, so instead of picking out the letters I need for the the notes, I just cut out letters indiscriminately. So after cutting out a bunch of letters from magazines, newspapers and fliers I had a large pile of cut out letters spread out on the kitchen table. Again, not sketch at all...

Quick side note, my room is sparsely decorated. I prefer to think of it as "spartan" or "minimalist". But some people have joked that it resembles what a serial killer's room might look like. You know, as they sit there under a naked light bulb, crocheting a cute little human skin ascot or whatever the hell serial killers do in their spare time.

Besides listen to "Huey Lewis and the News" of course!

My room mate immediately was like, "What happens if I bring some chick over here tonight, we walk in and she sees like these ransom notes? She's going to think I brought her her to kill her or something! You'll come out of your room, all big and beardy looking and what not. And I'll have to be like, "No! She's cool man!". How do you think that's going to affect my game? Poorly. That's how."

So in summary, it's inconsiderate to give out the slightest illusion that you might be a kidnapping serial killer because it adversely affects your room mate's ability to mack on some random girl he met at a bar.

Lesson learned.

On a side note, the treasure hunt went really well and I think that my friend really enjoyed her birthday present. The actual gift at the end wasn't very expensive, but I think that putting the time and effort into creating the journey was what she really appreciated.

"Very nice!"