Happy Birthday, Mavis!

I'm having a hard time believing that the girl was born 17 yrs ago today.  At the exact moment of her arrival, we'll be sitting at a table at Ginza of Tokyo doing the sushi & hibachi thing with her boyfriend along for the festivities.  

I remember my 17th bday, and I have to say, I'm really glad her friends don't have the tradition of TP-ing the bday kid's house the way mine did.  I can still remember sneaking out to help unroll about 75 rolls of TP onto June's house in Dec. of 1980.  My house was a much tougher target, so there were usually only 2-3 rolls on my bday.  We also would make banners to hang in the quad of the school on each other's birthdays.  SEXY 17! was always our favorite.  

I think that DH and I are much more involved and cognizant of what's going on with Mavis than my folks were with me.  I used to just head out to "so and so's" nearly every night at 17.  I turned 18 the middle of Senior year, and pretty much quit having to account for my whereabouts, as long as I took care of my sisters when I was supposed to, got all my chores done, and kept up with my grades.  Of course, I ran with a bunch of AP students, and weeknights were actually devoted to our studies, so our grades showed that we were doing what we said we were.  But we were kind of hellions on the weekends, and I'm sure my folks would be surprised to know just how much we got up to back then.

Mavis isn't the dedicated student I was, but she's got a job and her modeling night-school gig now, plus frequent babysitting, so she's not just running wild.  She seems to be doing well.  Last weekend, a bunch of her friends wanted her to go snowboarding, but she had to do 3 loads of laundry first, so they came and took her to the laundromat to do them all at once, LOL.  They even paid for the machines, because they wanted her to go with.  Unfortunately, Sat. at a laundromat is peak time, so they didn't finish in time for her to go after all.  But they promised to take her tomorrow (no school) for her birthday.