The Best Holiday

Some people argue over which holiday is the absolute best. However, the answer to that question should be extremely obvious. The best holiday is your birthday of course! Your special day is all about, well, YOU.  Waking up at home on your birthday is always a fantastic moment. You run downstairs to your smiling parents and balloons tied to the back of your chair. Your favorite breakfast of pancakes and strawberries in a smiley face formation is waiting to be eaten. Okay, that sounds a little childish.
However, I sincerely believe that everyone deserves to indulge in their inner child on their birthday. But the fact is, we do not live at home anymore. So what about spending your birthday at college? In this wondrous place of thousands of students, parties, and no parental vision, birthdays lose their homey touch. Well, unless you live in my apartment.
 
One of my roommates recently celebrated her birthday. She was the first to have a birthday in our apartment. My other two roommates and I wanted to make her day as special as possible. Naturally, as college students, all of the birthday plans were last minute. Nonetheless, her birthday turned out to be a major success and started many new traditions. 
 
On the morning of her birthday, we rushed around the tight apartment, trying our very best to keep quiet. Our first task was to decorate with balloons, streamers and banners. Sounds like a normal birthday right? But to wake up the birthday girl from her beauty sleep, we played Jeremiah’s “Birthday Sex” right outside her door. We figured this sensual tune would get her day started off the right way. Then we proceeded to have a crazy dance party in the kitchen to the classic song played at family reunions, “Celebrate Good Times” by Kool and the Gang. Can you imagine getting down like this with your parents? That is one image I would rather leave out of my mind.
 
Just like her parents would at home, we made our roommate her favorite breakfast of bacon and eggs. Besides, if we planned to keep her dancing, she needed to be energized. While my roommates and I were busy cooking her breakfast, the birthday girl got a better look at the unique decorations. Along with the classic “Happy Birthday” signs, we added a little something to spice things up. The three of us
stayed up late printing out absurd pictures off Google. Our search history is forever tainted with the phrases “fat bearded man with birthday hat” and my personal favorite “Santa in birthday suit.” We searched for any funny picture that was even slightly birthday related. After wasting most of our color ink cartridges, we taped these crazy, unorthodox pictures around the apartment. The birthday girl loved the pictures so much, they stayed up for weeks after and it became a tradition for birthdays to follow.
 
Despite our best efforts to make our roommate feel at home on her special day, we had to honor our college ways. Unlike her usual birthday spent at a nice restaurant with family and close friends, my roommate spent her night party hopping. She traded up a delicious Shirley Temple for a Cosmopolitan, and a game of family charades for beer pong. It was not home, but my roommate enjoyed every minute of dancing the night away in a steamy Pheasant Run apartment full of sweaty people she didn’t know.