30 minus three

At 7am, the Troll rang me up from Baltimore to wish me a happy 27th birthday. It's a tradition we have. Since she teaches summer school, we haven't actually spent a birthday together in almost 10 years. The closest we come is our frightfully early birthday conversations every July 18.

Growing up as a fraternal twin, you learn to share everything, including the day of your birth. With our joint friends we would have joint birthday parties where we would occassionally be forced to share a joint gift (on behalf of all twins out there I say to the joint gift thing "yeah, fuck you too"). We shared a room growing up (with bunkbeds!) where I was subjected to years of what I later found out was the third loudest snore ever recorded at a Johns Hopkins sleep study. Obviously if you can laugh about something that traumatic now, you are definitely going to be BFF's for life.

Following the Communist principle of share and share alike, on the 16th anniversary of our birth Dad bequeathed us a 1989 Chrysler New Yorker, which of course I never let Troll drive. She would call me lard-ass, I would sucker-punch her and snatch the keys. It was a really great system until we seperated to go to college.

My sister and I have been living in different states since 1998. Even though our birthday crops up in July, she teaches summer school so it's tough for her to get back up to Boston. Aside from showering me with conservative dribble in manner of a Boston Herald subscription, my parents celebrate my birthday by taking me out to a restaurant of my choice. We're heading down to Federal Hill tomorrow and although I'm excited about going to my favorite restaurant ever, it saddens me that Troll won't be there to celebrate our special day.

Next week I am going to be in Baltimore for work so we are going to celebrate our birthday, albeit a week late. We've got our joint birthday planned already: we're going to dine in style at Ruth's Chris and then go white water rafting in West Virginia. Even though we are completely different people, we'll always have at least one thing in common: our birthday. It would be great if aside from the 7am phone calls if we could make a summer outing another recurring tradition.