Ananda

I turned 17 on Saturday. 17 isn’t a very exciting year, although as a math student, I can appreciate that it’s one of only a few prime numbers that we can reach, age-wise.

On my birthday, I was awakened by my parents relatively early (for a weekend). They came into my room with a bundle of presents and a balloon, singing happy birthday. The first present I opened was a new phone, which, after having a standard Blackberry for two years, was utterly amazing.

I opened a few more gifts while lying in bed with my parents and cats sitting next to me, then got showered and dressed and waited for my friends to arrive. First was Rebecca, who gave me the most wonderful zombie apocalypse survival kit in the most elaborately decorated box and packaging: She painted the box black and wrapping paper gray, and wrote “open only in case of zombie apocalypse” on the front of everything. Even my card was a survival guide! I was moved that she put that much effort into my gift.

My friends Isabel and Saul and my bestie Sophie arrived, and after uncomfortably opening more gifts in front of everyone, we all got a taxi to the ice skating rink, where we met my friend and Sophie’s cousin Ethan. We got on our skates, and Ethan was by far the best. He went so fast that he was asked to slow down by one of the staff. We spent over two hours skating around.

We went home and played Cards Against Humanity and a game called Head On, which got really intense and competitive. It’s a word game where a judge stands above two competitors and says a word that’s on a card to them. They go back and forth saying related words until someone stumbles or pauses and the judge hits the loser on the head with an inflatable hammer. It got really crazy [What happened?] and my team figured out some tactics about how to get points on the other team. After, we had a lot of pizza and a mini dance party in my kitchen. It was a great day, thanks to my lovely friends and family. ♦