Lucky #11

The #11 became my lucky number when I was 5 years old. I was attending Sunday school on Easter Sunday at the local Salvation Army church (before I was put in foster care) and the teacher was giving away a rabbit and we had to guess the number. I didn't know my numbers at all but I said 11 and I won the rabbit. A couple years later I also won a haunted house that our teacher drew (huge 8x4) by guessing the lucky number, which of course was 11. So you would think that my 11th birthday in the 11th months would have been fantastic - it so was not and ever since this birthday I have despised my birthday and all holidays of a family gathering or gift giving nature (4th of July is okay).

I have always remembered that my birthday was on a Saturday that year but it actually was a Sunday. I remember my foster dad was helping one of the neighbors cut up a deer that he had shot previously but maybe it happened the day before my birthday because I can not imagine my dad doing this type of work on a Sunday.

Anyway let me get to the point of this story - it is about birthday cards, competition, honesty and dishonesty and the point in my life when even my brother and sisters had to admit that for some reason the foster parents were intent on making me feel less than anyone else.

Two things happened this birthday, firstly, every year my foster mom's older sister (Aunt E) and her husband (Uncle N) would send all of the children birthday cards without fail, except I never received one...ever...period. I had met them the summer of '71 along w/my brother but my two sisters hadn't met them until 1976 (if my memory is correct). Us foster children were not allowed to get the mail but this year my brother and two sisters and myself had decided we were going to solve the reason why I didn't get a card. We all believed that it was being sent I think but we wanted proof. My brother made an extra effort all week under the pretense of 'exercise' to run the mile to our house and check the mail before their son got home w/my older sister who both rode the bus into town.

It was Friday when it was confirmed, my brother said he saw a birthday card from the Aunt and Uncle addressed to me in the mailbox, so we decided to just wait until my birthday to see if I would get it. I must say that I did have some hope in me that really they had just forgotten about me the previous years because my birthday was not close to any of the others (their own children were spring babies and my siblings were summer babies as well as the other foster boy they had at the time).

The second thing that happened was regarding the 'friendly family competition' of who told someone Happy Birthday first. Mom usually beat everyone else to it but this particular year my sister (just older than me) told me Happy Birthday the moment we woke up. Mom would usually 'boast' about being the first and I had no bad feelings about this, to me it was just simply a friendly competition. When Mom told me happy birthday I said thank you and...dumb...stupid...ingrate me also informed her that my sister had beat her to the greeting. The next thing I knew was I was being told how rude and ungrateful I was and not another soul in the house told me happy birthday that day. I never did get that birthday card and that was the last year that I didn't work on my birthday. That was another rule we had. We were exempt from household chores on our birthday and got to choose our birthday meal.

I just realized the irony of me writing this today, it is their daughter's 46th birthday today, I already sent her a greeting via facebook. We aren't close but I do still love them all. I still love the #11 I just don't like birthdays. Still competitive because I refuse to let them break my spirit. This was the birthday that I realized without a doubt that it wasn't just my imagination...my foster parents truly did hate me!