Worst Birthday Ever

Optimus Prime has a history of crapping out on me. The best example was when I was seven.

I was only allowed to have one friend over for my birthday that year. My parents said they couldn’t afford a party every year, so this was the compromise. Of course, I selected Prime. We were, after all, best friends.

On the day of my birthday, we were waiting for him to arrive. My parents had supper ready, and my cake sitting in the other room. My presents were there too, all that was missing was Prime. It started to get late, at least, later than we normally had supper. So I called.

Prime told me he wasn’t coming.

There’s this photo of me on my seventh birthday, looking up from my birthday cake with the most awful look of disappointment. In fact, I didn’t even have a piece of cake right away. I just went to my room.

This wasn’t the only time in our long friendship that he has done this. Many a time we have planned things only to have him crap out at the last minute. It is at times irritating, and at times depressing. We have argued about it, joked about it, but it really hasn’t changed much.

There is a slight variation now. It arose in the past eight years or so, around the time he was getting married. He just doesn’t commit to doing anything, and often outright turns me down.

Part of me understands. A wife, two kids, one brand new, a house, one car, a suburb far away from my apartment. It all makes it difficult.

But part of me thinks he’s a huge dick. I didn’t see him once between the time Wilma told me she was leaving and the time she left. That was two months. The night she told me, I called him, delirious, begging him to come and get me to do something, to talk me down. From a pay phone I called him. He didn’t. He said he couldn’t leave his wife with the kids. He tried to talk me down from the payphone, and it worked to a certain degree, but I still feel like he was a dick. For fuck’s sake, if you can’t come to the aide of your best friend when his fucking wife is leaving, when can you come to his aide?

It wasn’t until I talked to Minako about this that I saw another dimension to this whole thing. I could go to him. I know, it sounds stupidly obvious, but I always waited for him to invite me and when he didn’t, I invited him over, but he couldn’t come. So when I suggested I come over, on the bus, he agreed. He could drive me home, but he didn’t have to worry about juggling after-school pick-ups and car negotiations, etc.

And I finally got to see his brand new baby.

Sometimes I think I should just explode on him and call him a fucking dick for all the times he has ditched me all the way back to when I was seven, but then I think that I just have to accept things the way they are. I wish Prime was there for me when I needed him, I wish that we hung out more, but in the absence of that, I’ll take what I can get: an occasional lunch conversation, brief phone chats, and a rare visit to his house to play with his kids.