….as in Twenty-Five Dollar U.S. Savings Bond…baby!
Ah yes, it’s that time of year again. The nights are getting colder, the days shorter and after a ten or eleven month hiatus pumpkin bagels are back ‘in season’. Yes, it’s Fall, my second favorite season, second only to summer and Christmas if Christmas qualifies as its own season. (Which I think it does) Actually, if I lived in the Southern Hemisphere I could kill two birds with one stone, huh? Might not be a bad idea. But yeah, Fall, you know what happens in the Fall…what coincides with ‘pumpkin bagel season’? You guessed it! It’s ‘birthday month’ – as in mine! Yes, when the clock strikes midnight on October 1st my family (all two of us) begins a month long celebration of my birthday – kinda the equivalent of the Advent calendar but just for me. Only child thing I guess.
Ah birthday month. It’s a shame its in October as I look horrible in orange and black, hate all orange food – especially carrots, and I was always stuck having to compete with Halloween. By compete I mean like when your mom throws you your ninth consecutive surprise party, (at the ripe old age of 21) and tries to get all your “newly legal” friends to sit around the kitchen table playing ‘Bunk-o’ and drinking ‘pop’, and everyone generally has something better to do. Like laundry. I just can’t think of any worse of a time for a birthday – well except maybe Christmas cause then your parents might try and stiff you on presents and that would stink.
Suprise parties aside, the culmination of said birthday (which hasn’t fallen on a weekend for as long as I can remember dammit!) is what I call the ‘annual trip to the bank’. I like to make an event out of it. You see every year; on October 24th (United Nations’ Day) one of my Twenty-Five Dollar U.S. Savings Bonds matures. Yes, after twenty-five years or whatever the gestation period of a bond is I get to proudly walk into the bank and leave $37.50 richer. Top that Trust Fund Babies. While your portfolio is de-valuing in this challenging economy my bonds are only going up – if only by 1/1000000th of a penny.
And no, I’m not bitter. No, not at all. Being a ‘bond baby’ has truly taught me the value of money. Who needs a shopping spree in NYC when you can use that $37.50 to pay off a nearly half of your monthly cable bill? And who needs a new car on your sixteenth birthday when instead your parents can hand you down a 1982 Subaru with a hole in the back right door, no back bumper (eventually lost the front one too) and the need to be parked ‘in the sun’ and ‘facing downhill’ if you ever wanted it to start in the morning.
Yeah, ‘bond babies’ unite I tell you! Oh and grandma, if you are reading this (which I highly doubt) thanks again for the US Savings Bond!!!! I am forever grateful!
Filed under: Light Pink | Tagged: birthdays, grandma, savings_bonds |
The Pink Pamphlet 
I thought this was going to be about James Bond for some reason.
Angela….I can’t believe you have held on to those dudes. They are forgotten memories where your cousins are concerned. Wow! You held on ’til the bond matured. Hmmmmmm! I’ve gotten the “I” series for my grandkids for several years and I’d bet they were turned in the next week after their birthdays.
@Aunt Norma. Ha! Yeah, Ma & Pa Self wouldn’t let me near those bonds until I graduated from college (and after the Subaru made its final trip down Route 10)
@Gia for the record. I am not a James Bond fan, sorry dad.
I actually used some bonds that my grandmother had given me as part of the down payment for my first house. It was what she always wanted. I had them over 25 years before I cashed them in.
Getting bonds sucked as a kid. “Here’s 25$ that you can’t spend on the candy, toy, material-thing-of-the-moment that you want now. You’ll appreciate it when your older.”
You’re the anti-bond poster child.
At least with gift certificates there’s an attempt to at least satisfy that birthday desire for presents. Maybe a iTunes gift card is less patriotic (unless you’re george bush) but at least I can get an actual present (well if music can be called a present, since it does not physically exist).
Angela, I am going to make a copy of this and mail it to your grandmother. Let’s see who will be laughing THEN, huh, Norma?
Oh good, this works. I have been having trouble with the Internet lately, and I sent a really wonderful comment twice to your “Theme me Up” blog and it just disappeared into cyberspace–much like Captain Kirk!
So anyway, Angela’s birthdays were ALWAYS a big event in the Self household. Every year , the day after Christmas was over, she would start talking about her birthday. We finally threatened her that she would get NO presents unless she promised never to mention her birthday until October 1st. On September 30th, she just couldn’t wait until the next day. This is not an exageration; this is the absolute truth. Birthday Week was really Hell Week, because she kept adding new little birtday “asides” each year in order to stretch the event into a longer time frame. Not to mention her “Half Birthday” (April 24th). How many people do you know who celebrate THOSE)
10/24 is crashing down upon us with the momentum of a runaway freight train. I better get my act together.
An aside to the math geeks out there – Angela’s birthday is 10-24, mine is 5-12. Both are a “powers of two” exponent, mine 2^9, hers 2^10. Coincidence – I think not! Fascinating? Like I even need to answer this one (yes).
Powers of two are very important in this binary world that we live in. Angela should feel very fortunate – but I can assure you she 1) Doesn’t even care what I am saying, and 2) Stopped reading one paragraph up and will never see this sentence.