Birthdays

When it was your birthday at the Ulmer Theater, you were expected to provide champagne for the performance. We were a Volkstheater with almost nightly operettas with almost nightly drinking scenes. You would come early and ask the house manager to sell you two bottles of champagne and take them up to the property manager.

Then during the performance when it came time to drink, everyone would taste their drink, smile to see that this was real champagne and ask discreetly whose birthday it was. When it was me, they would each smile and raise their glasses to me. I doubt that the audience ever noticed this small drama being acted out.

When I think of birthdays now, I think of them. This is not a meme.