Above all else

Happy birthday to me!  Growing up in a family which made a big deal of celebrating all our birthdays, and with a lot of doting aunts and uncles, meant birthdays were often accompanied by toys! Stars Wars, He-man, then Mask, Centurions, then Transformers...  I remember that I once hurt my knee falling down at school, and the bandage got all stuck in the wound, and I dramatically screamed my lungs out as my aunts pulled the bandage off the scab one painful thread at a time.  The side benefit was that my aunt turned up that evening with a gigantic Castle Grayskull set to cheer me up :D I think it's fair to say most of us were not wealthy, but what my parents and extended family were, was incredibly generous. Those birthdays were really full of "YAAAYYY!!!!" joy. Today, birthdays are quite a bit more mellow, except when my younger cell members occasionally get a bit excited and throw a party :D But there are definitely still a lot of YAAAYYY! moments.  When we see our fr...