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In 1965, I was a sophomore at Crane High School in Chicago.  There were not a lot of us geeks there at the time.  I made acquaintance with another rather geeky young man named Leonard.  We soon realized that we had many interests in common, from chess and comic books to bowling and science fiction, so we became fast friends.  At some point we also discovered that we actually shared the same birthday, September 29th, the same year, 1950.  So we decided to celebrate our birthday together.  That first time, we probably had dinner and went bowling or something like that.

That was the start of a long standing tradition.  Except for a couple of years when Leonard was in the Army, and I was back home in college, we have celebrated our birthdays together (once I had a birthday party in my dorm room on campus and sent an audio recording of it to him, all the way to his base in Germany).  The tradition is that we do it alone, no wives or girlfriends, and our spouses have always been very understanding and respected that.  Sometimes we would go to a club or bar (that pretty much ended after we got married), usually we’d have a nice dinner, go bowling, go to a movie or find a quiet place to pay chess.  Then we would end the night reminiscing.

One year I got tickets to a murder mystery play that was an audience participation kind of thing.  Because I bought the tickets on the phone with my credit card, they actually knew my name and where I was sitting.  The setting of the play was supposed to be a dinner function in the basement of a church, and the characters kept thanking me for providing the meat for the meal.  I played along, of course.  To this day, I’m sure that the other people at the table thought we were part of the cast.

Tonight, for our 44th celebration, we went to see the movie “Surrogate” at the Hollywood Blvd. theatre in the southwest suburban Woodridge.  You sit in comfortable, individual chairs at a bar or table, and they serve you dinner while you watch the movie.  Great fun, and the movie was good too.

This year we turned 59, and we’re trying to come up with something special for our 60th next year.  Of course, as we get older, the outings get tamer.  Back in the day we’d stay out all night.  Tonight I was home by 10:00 PM.

I keep saying that one day I was going to compare birth certificates to see who was really older.

So, happy birthday to me and happy birthday to my buddy and brother Leonard.  God willing, we shall celebrate many more–together!

In this rarely seen footage, a 14-year-old Michael Jackson appears on TV’s Dating Game!

Hard to believe it’s the same person!

Found this through a really cute website called www.upchucky.com