Barttimesnow: greg oden

Holidays are the worst time to be single. No presents, no gifts, no parties… no meaningful snuggling by a warm fire while drinking hot cocoa and stirring things up with a spoon (and no, I’m not talking about hot cocoa anymore). Instead, you come home to an empty, undecorated room, turn on Sportscenter and drift slowly to sleep with a glass of milk. (Yeah, definitely no spoon… not even with hot cocoa….) Aaaaaand, I just realized that I celebrate a ‘holiday’ almost every, single night of my life. Yay, me.

(Did you see what I did there? A little thing called The Double Entendre.)

The other night we went to dinner with the basketball girls to celebrate a birthday. (From here on out if I ever mention the term ‘basketball girls’ or the ‘bball girls’… just know I’m referring to the BYU Women’s Basketball team. Yeah, we hang out.) Have you ever been sitting around the dinner table with your family and had someone ask, “What was the best part of your day?” Well I haven’t. Thank goodness most of my family dinners were spent in absolute silence. Occasionally there was lobbying over who gets the last scoop of potatoes, and loud, spasmodic ventilation of you-know-what… but what are you going to do with three boys?

Anyways, back to the bball girls… so we did the ‘best part of your day’ thing, with everyone taking a turn. I said, “Talking to mom about Christmas.” It got a few ooos and awes… but as the group continued listening to other ‘best day’ stories, I couldn’t help but think… That was also the worst part of my day. You see, my birthday is one month before Christmas: November 28. It’s hard for me to believe that my sweet mother could get swept up in society’s greed-filled plague of the ‘me first, give thanks second’ mode of thinking that has our whole nation going from Halloween to Christmas in a matter of 24 hours…. But she skipped right over my birthday… and went straight to Christmas.

So, I gave my mom my Christmas list… which just so happens to be my birthday list…

Do you think Jesus will mind if I open my collection of Calvin and Hobbes comic books on His birthday? Yeah, I don’t think he will either.

Oh, and one more thought… if you forget your birthday… does it still count? Or can I go on being 25 for another year?... I wonder if that’s what Greg Oden, LeBron James, and Baron Davis thought…