Beanz and Birthdays

            My secondary school had an odd tradition that no doubt, other state schools sadly follow too. If you were unfortunate for your birthday to fall upon a school day then you were the subject of abuse by your classmates in the form of physical abuse. According to how many years you had lived on this world was parallel to how many punches you would receive from one person. So, if it was, say,  your 15^th birthday you would receive 15 punches – and with so many people in your year this number could eventually rack up, leaving your arm bruised as you experimented with those gifts you received. There were two ways of escaping this: 1) Somehow keeping your birthday a secret for the 5 years you spent in the school, 2) If you were born on one of the 195 days that wasn’t spent in school, so weekends and holidays (7 weeks of holiday in the summer, 1 week in the autumn, 2 weeks in the winter and 3 in the spring). This therefore gave you a 53% chance that you would avoid the punishment. My birthday was during the holidays, so I managed to avoid this, but many a time did I witness others experience that which makes it such a ‘special day’.

In Primary school however, you wanted it to fall in school time. If it did, then you could stand at the front of the class at the end of day, feeling all embarrassed as 30 bored faces sang ‘Happy Birthday’ at your stupidly-grinning red face. Then you could hand out sweets (That your mum had been forced to buy) to the rest of the class. People could wish you Happy Birthday throughout the day and you could give out your Birthday invites during this time. Whilst every Parent would buy their kid a pack of ‘Please come to my Birthday’ cards, or indeed, do nothing – leaving their child to ask everyone instead, we went the extra mile.

Most of the other kids dads worked in office, drove lorry’s or probably doing what would be considered a fairly mediocre task. My father worked in his own Studio – which was based in our house. It was there where all the magic happened, where people would come and go and where the music would be made. In that tiny little studio in the middle of North London was where the post-Love City Groove music was formed, from South-East Asian number 1’s to Ant and Dec. So many memories in that small room, indeed, what is now my room. I don’t often consider what actually went on during most of the 2000’s before it became my bedroom, since all I use it for now is sleeping. Just to make a point clear, the equipment isn’t still there; I don’t sleep on a mixing table like some crazed music fanatic. We did remove all of the wires and equipment and replaced it with beds and teddies.

Since we had the Studio, we were able to replace Birthday cardboard with CD plastic, ink with sound waves, and invitation with inspiration. Instead of writing the normal, boring invitations, we designed CD’s requesting the receiver to come to my Birthday. We always stayed with the theme of the event, so when I planned to spend my 11^th Birthday watching Star Wars Revenge of the Sith, having had a Lightsaber battle beforehand and Pizza Hut afterwards, the invite CD’s were designed to represent the Star Wars theme. If, for some reason that is not allowed by the laws of physics, you have never watched a Star Wars movie; then what I’m about to say will make no sense. My Dad did the voice of a Clone Commander ‘Requesting the presence of said person at this point and this location for the battle!’ In the background he placed gunfire (well laser gunfire) and other Star Wars related sounds. Then, amidst all of that chaos came the voice of an 11 year old boy whose voice had not yet broken, reminding this person that it was his birthday – and telling them the event of the evening. It sounded out of place to say the least.

People went crazy for the CD’s, children I didn’t like and who had proven themselves to not like me back, were begging for an invitation. Others were asking: “Why didn’t get one?” over and over, it sounded as though there were 15 parrot squabbling amongst themselves in the classroom. Eventually the noise died down and half the class sat down, grumbling and mumbling curses against me. The following day brought more confusion. Some people didn’t have CD players, so instead of just telling me when I gave them the invitation, they brought the unplayable CD home and then told me the issue the following day. It took a lot of unnecessary effort, but eventually everyone coming knew the details. To be honest, as brilliant as the idea was, it turned out to be not to successful given that it created more problems than it solved. Thinking back on it, 14 pieces of card would have probably been more suitable. 

-Side Note- I realised as I was writing this that a lot of the non-UK viewers (I'm looking at you, people of the USA), will have trouble understanding some of the terms described. So I'll quickly write down a definition of some of the words I believe are different in the US. Please comment if there is anything I missed, in fact, just comment in general.

• Secondary School - Middle school (I think it occupies the same years) 
• Primary school - Elementary school
• Sweets - Candy
• Lorry - Truck
• Ant and Dec (Two very famous TV presenters from Newcastle)