good times

a friend asked me today if i had ever been to "casa bonita," that shit hole of a gem of a mexican restaurant on pecos street in denver. i replied emphatically that i had indeed been to said shithole/gem and it brought me to this memory:

a really, really excellent thing about my mother is that she let us call the shots as far as what we wanted to do on our birthday. she'd yank all of us out of school so we could celebrate the day with our siblings in exactly the fashion we wanted. if you were my brother ben, you sat at the "house of pies" all day and ate, well, pie. if you were my sister margo, you hung out the ball room at the children's museum on bannock street. and if you were me, you headed to the "beautiful house."

now there are scant words to describe how fabulous this place is to an eight year old kiddo. take the best kid's birthday party you have ever been to and add in swords and fire and men in speedos and sopapillas on demand and puppet shows and glow in the dark necklaces and tunnels and fake money and, well, there you have casa bonita.

so it was my birthday and i was livin' large at el bonita. i was on my third bowl of sopapillas and my second canister of honey, blissfully watching the man in the yellow speedo dive off the fake cliff into the lagoon, i.e.basement of a strip mall, when i started to feel a bit queasy. i don't remember what happened after this so this is where my mom's recollection takes over.

acccording to her, i was no where to be found for a full 40 minutes. and just as she was about to call the police, she went outside to find me next door, passed out on a bed in the showroom of a 'big sur' waterbeds. mom said when she got closer she could see the honey dripping down my chin onto my grey "member's only" jacket.

now that's what i call a birthday.