JUNE 2007 - The festivities began when I went down to the Dining Room. The end of the week was a bustle because we had to make a fun and memorable birthday party for our “honorary young adult." That’s right, folks, our own Mr. Eugene Kirchner turned 66 years young! I guess you could say that we went all out for his special day because Eugene means a lot to us and we love him and are very protective of him.
The reason that we wanted to do this for him was because he always used to come to our Friday pizza-and-movie nights, but about six months ago he started to develop physical problems; we came to find out that Eugene couldn’t have salt (except on very seldom, special occasions), so it was a bummer when we heard that he couldn’t attend the Friday socials anymore.
Over the next four months, we were always talking about how it was a shame that he couldn’t come to the Clerical Unit on Fridays because there would be pizza there and he would possibly get tempted and it would be rude to eat in front of him. So we thought and thought about ways that we could include him in the festivities and came up with the idea of having a make-your-own-pizza night, which would be perfect. We could purchase low-sodium pizza sauce, low-sodium cheese, and dough. Of course he couldn’t have meats such as pepperoni or sausage on his pizza, but sometimes we have to give a little to get a little. On that particular Friday, we had all of the ingredients and were psyched to get to work, but it was coincidental because that very day we heard that Eugene was in the hospital for health problems. Boy, were we bummed! We really wanted to make it up to him, but didn’t quite know how so we were “in a tizzy”, as our friend likes to often say.
At the beginning of May we heard that Eugene’s 66th birthday was coming up so we knew what we had to do. After getting a reluctant “okay” from his worker, we started to make plans for that Friday. Anyone can buy a cake from a bakery such as Pozzo’s or Amy’s Bread, but we really wanted to add a special touch, so I decided to make a cake. That wasn’t enough, though, and as I said before about the cake, the same applied to the card. I found a large sheet of paper and search for pictures of Central Park. When I found one that looked really beautiful and serene, I printed it out and glued it to the sheet of paper and voila! we had our own unique, homemade birthday card!
The next day was Eugene’s time to shine, so I went over to the 441 Residence where he lives and asked him what movie he wanted to see. I had an idea, because from how he constantly talks about this movie and the song “Old Man River." I (correctly) found out that he wanted to see “Showboat”. Now I’ve seen “Fiddler on the Roof”, but aside from that, I’m definitely not at all familiar with Broadway musicals! So when I went to the Video Café, I searched to find a movie just as good and I came across “Bye Bye Birdie." I guess that it was a pretty good choice, because when we gathered in Clerical he got a huge, Kool-Aid grin on his face when he saw the box.
Now I’ll talk about the party… usually only 5-10 (at the most) young adults show up at the Friday night socials and we end up having too much leftover pizza, which has been the norm lately. We had to order four large pizzas this time because at least 20 people came! After we had the pizza and the cake (one slice for our man because he’s on a very strict diet, which he isn’t fond of), we gave him the card and took a bunch of group pictures. I remember seeing him look like he was about to cry when he saw the card. He said “Thank you” numerous times. I’m pretty sure that he had a great time and we made his party memorable. It was a lot of hard work, but it was all worth it when we saw his smiling face.
