everybody hates worlds colliding...

alright, here it is, the overly anticipated berfday blawg.  i apologize in advance if it's not everything people have probably hyped it up to be.  it is what it is.  meanwhile, now i'm thirty-four years old, and feeling every bit of it. some people feel younger the older they get.  i just go with the flow, and the flow is telling me that i'm old as hell.  when i'm playing volleyball, i find myself constantly ending plays with some version of "ten years ago i could've...".  that's a damn shame.  just last year it was only "five years ago."  i guess times be hard, and bitches still be trippin'...

so to start...RIP (2009 - 2011)

 

that's right.  it's all gone...the hair that i worked so hard for two years and a half to grow was chopped off in a random act of violence known as "going to the barbershop."  so now i'm slowly getting accustomed to this:

what you see here is a strong willed black man (little angry)...

most men remember the day that they realize that their hair is not going to be growing back anymore.  for me, that unfortunate day was 25 october 2011.  that's when i knew that this receding hairline was going to be receding at a more alarming rate than anything i've ever know.  it's so depressing to have to go through something like that.  most women won't ever understand it, but to all the guys out there...look at your father and grandfathers (specifically their heads).  it's just so weird; i never saw it coming.  baldness doesn't particularly run in my family.  my grandfather managed to maintain his 1972 afro until the day he died.  it was a shock to find out years later that the reason his hair never went gray was because he used shoe polish that was so black that light itself could not escape.  and my father is not balding at all either.  i must have done something wrong in a past life to have been cursed to be the first of a future long line of descendants to go extra-prematurely bald.  i'd rather have done the anderson cooper and gone gray at age five.

i think i digressed.  anyway...so my berfday began officially at midnight.  for as long as i've been able to stay awake until midnight, my mama has always called me then to sing "happy berfday" to you (but surprisingly, never has she informed me that i would be soon going bald).  it's become a sort of tradition with us.  she calls me, i call her.  either way, my day won't be right until she calls.  i mean, why not?  she's the one who had the privilege of berfing me, right?  i'm just kidding...it was the furthest thing from a privilege.

i decided to go and play volleyball.  what better way to enjoy the happiest day of the year for me than to do something that i really enjoy.  so i went, and every time i'd see somebody i'd shout out, "it's my berfday!"  of course everyone was wowed by my new look.

random person: oh my god, what happened to your hair?
me: i cut it.
random person: oh my god, why?
me: it was time to let it go.
random person: oh my god, you look so good.
me: thanx, but please stop saying "oh my god."

it's a hit...and apparently i look years younger without all that hair.  and what's really interesting is that all the caps and hats i used to wear are now way too big for my head.

anyway, after volleyball i was to meet my new "family" to go shopping at the outlet mall in frisco.  luby and trip (for some reason) take up too much of my life these days.  so when volleyball was over i went home to meet them, shower, change, and go right back out again.

from youngest to oldest...arrogant butthead, overly emotional control freak, me (not pictured: trip's ego)

so now, here's something you might not know about me: i'm very selfless and extremely considerate of others, despite...well, everything else.  that being mentioned, i feel like my berfday, 29 october, is the one day that i get to not care about anything or anybody else and it be okay.  so, imagine the three of us going all the way to frisco (which is only twenty minutes from me, but a small eternity from luby and trip) so luby can shop for her kids.  i started out saying something, but since i have "the eye" i can sort of see things coming.  so i decided to just bite my lip (which hurt) and go along for the proverbial ride.  truthfully, i just wanted to go hang out with those two knuckleheads and just go in and out of stores and have fun and eat because i was absolutely starving.

we went to baby gap, the children's place, gymboree, stride rite, osh kosh b'gosh, every other kid's store imaginable, and then coach.  what the hell do i need from any of those stores?  on my berfday?  my berfday?  my berfday?  being thirty-four has really softened me up.  i used to be so vocal about such things, but this time i just let it go.  so, we followed luby inside all these kid stores (none of which had a single toy, which could have eliminated any ill feelings) just to stand there and listen to her rant about how she wants her kids to look like their own selves, while simultaneously buying two of everything as if she were noah planning for the ark, or trying to raise the doublemint twins.  anyway, we ended up having a good time hanging out...after we finished shopping for luby's kids.

when we were done, it was time to get to the party.  i'd like to take this time to point out that my friend (whom i'll call x) is the bestest best event planner in the world.  she really is.  so, the plan for the party was twofold.  we were to meet for karaoke and then go to a haunted house.  the party was supposed to start for seven o'clock, and i knew in my mind that i was going to finally get somewhere on time for once in my life.  needless to say, it didn't happen.  we were late getting back to my place to get changed so we could make it for the party.

i run my life on cp time.  for those of you who aren't in the know, cp time refers to being a little late for something, but at the same time it's on time in your mind.

in addition to all of this, my long time roommate and good friend "chong" drove all the way from houston to come to the berfday party.  he's the bestest.  so the four of us were here getting costumed.  for the past few years, i've always just worn a halloween costume for my berfday party.  just because.

chong and me

me, my sister, and my brother

we got to the party twenty minutes late (which wasn't too bad) and of course pretty much everyone else had been there for a while.  i won't bother to talk about how difficult it was to get to this korean karaoke place, at least not this time.

the whole reason for the title of this blawg is this:

like most people, i have many sets of friends...worlds, if you will.  i have my current work world.  i have my former work world.  i have my family world.  i have my volleyball world.  i have my church world.  there are many worlds.  and the point of having all these worlds is the challenge that comes along with them.  when you have multiple worlds, the challenge is to keep them from colliding.  worlds can't collide. luby and trip are proof that it shouldn't happen.  but i'll save that for when trip decides to start a blawg of his own...which probably won't happen because he's an idiot.

at the party were the following worlds: from my church world was my pastor (who's only twenty-nine) and his wife.  from my former work world were jab, kandi, big mama, jerome (who also worked with me at nysp this past summer), "jennifer," "pepper," and jab's boyfriend "chris."  from my current work world were luby, trip...and to a lesser extent, trip brought his friend "kenny."  from my volleyball world were x, "seefuzz," seefuzz's sister "anna," "daddy," "nene," and nene's husband "greg."  and of course there was chong, who doesn't really fit into any of the aforementioned groups.

there were too many worlds, and the thing is...as much as i try not to, i tend to act differently around different people.  in a perfect world, i'd be the same person with this group as well as that group, but it just is what it is.  they're not dramatic differences, though, just subtle ones.  but it concerned me.  in my volleyball world i am extremely goofy and always have a joke.  in my church world i'm more quiet and reserved (mostly because i'm a heathen).  in my work worlds i am more myself, which is an overly analytic and highly sarcastic son of a gun who's always on my p's and q's (i know the apostrophes don't actually go there, but i shy away from capital letters).  it was hard to balance all of that, but i was able to overcome.

karaoke itself got off to a rough start, mostly because everything was in korean...with no english subtitles.  the remote was korean, the book was korean, all the signs were korean.  we had the hardest time finding the place.  sidenote...i just sneezed directly onto my computer.  yuck.  anyway, we finally found the place and they gave us a room that was the size of three jupiters.  everybody had acres of space.  i wanted a smaller room so that everyone could mingle and get a chance to know each other.  instead, there was so much room that all my worlds just segregated themselves in different areas and hung out with themselves.  despite that, some new friendships were made.  luby and x seemed to get along well.  trip and x...not so much.  that's for another blawg, though.  kandi and jab said that they were jealous of my new friends, meaning trip and luby, because they were taking all of my time these days.  i felt badly hearing that, because i want to get along with everybody.  when everybody's at the same school, it's just easier to hang out.  when everyone's scattered across dallas, it gets a little harder.  but i am going to dedicate this blawg to kandi, whose overbearing personality prompted me to blawg...every time i made correspondence with her.  she f*cked up some grammar on the facebook and i went and corrected her, because i just can't help myself.  she was like..."n*gga, while you patrolling the internet, you need to be on that website putting up a berfday blawg..."  she can go in on somebody without conviction.

kandi is hilarious because she gives me a chance to see what i look like to other people.  we make the same faces, we tell similarly styled jokes, we laugh at the same things.  it's always nice to have somebody like that in your life to understand you.  you just need that one person who can be like, "you know what? i get you."  she gets me, and i get her.  too bad she's already married with children, otherwise i would...still leave her alone.  she's married to a giant.  i think i've mentioned that before.  it kinda makes me wonder if...nah...too gross.

anyway, karaoke...

this was trip (featuring me) doing r. kelly's "i believe i can fly."  the thing about that damn trip, is he only wanted to sing slow jams.  how do i look at a berfday party when he's trying to turn a festive occasion into midnight love?  we would find all these fast songs, and then he would follow it right back with luther vandross.  he's more like "loser" vandross.  don't tell him i said that, though.  he doesn't quite yet know who he is in the blawg.  by the by, my luther was much better than his luther...anytime.  random shout out to kandi.

after the fun times at the karaoke, a few of us went on all the way to fort worth for the haunted house.  this place scared the bejesus out of us...last year.  this made our third time there, so we kinda knew what to expect.  i was all over x like white on rice.  i didn't really pay attention to anything else because these people in there, they follow you for like ten minutes.  we passed this zombie with a chainsaw...why was he still there half a mile later?

from left to right: greg, nene, me, trip, x, chong.  luby took the picture.  this was after we got soaked from the rooter to the tooter.

when the whole thing was done, we went through this place where there were bubbles that reached eight feet high.  we were completely soaked.  it's the same mistake we made twice before.  it was fifty degrees outside.  you put that together.  we were some miserable folks when we came out of that.  trip pulled his pants off and drove home in his drawers.  um...goodnite everybody.  his penis looks like scooby doo's face.

after the haunted house debacle, we all parted and went our separate ways.  we three siblings ended up at an ihop for hours because luby is a girl.  all she wanted to do was talk about feelings and emotions, neither of which i have, and she wanted us to open up and be real with each other.  i was like, if people knew what went through my head...even for thirty seconds...

well, while we were there, all kinds of crazy people came and went.  it was halloween weekend, so there were some off the wall buffoonery going on.  i didn't laugh.  i tend to not laugh at things anymore.  i just make these confused faces, as if it doesn't make sense to me.  tell me something stoopid one day to my face; then you'll see the face yourself.

it was at least five in the morning when i got to bed...and had to go to church the next day because my pastor had come to the party, lol.  it was really fun times, and i enjoyed myself immensely.  i even thanked all my well wishers on facebook individually.  i love getting together with fun people and having good old fashioned FU...n.

yay, i'm thirty-four.

-w