My son is 15 years old today.

This fact blows my mind.

I was already having my mind blown by the fact that my youngest is 15, and then my pal Brian Ward said he’s halfway to 30, and that blew my mind.

And then I was thinking about how my oldest, Ani, has already voted in a presidential election, Sierra can vote in the next presidential election, Liam will just miss this one, but can get to it.

It was crazy.

It really does go fast.

This is news, right?

Nobody has ever talked about this before, but parents sometimes think that their kids grow up so fast.

I’m glad I could break this story to you, dear listener. Alright, we’re all thinking it.

Is the microphone I’m using good enough for this podcast?

I don’t know.

It’s convenient, because usually when I’m doing it at my sitting desk, which I’ve been doing more, honestly, I’ve been using my sitting desk more since my neck surgery, which is a while now, but I just find the walking a little bit trickier ever since then, which is not great, but it’s fine.

I’m going to figure it out.

But at the sitting desk, I have the less good microphone.

So when I record podcasts with co-hosts, I always get up and use the better microphone.

But at the sitting desk, I kind of hold a microphone up, and it’s not the world’s greatest, but it’s not the world’s worst.

Today, I’m using a different microphone that I’m not directly atop, but that is meant to be pretty good for the situation.

And listen, I’m getting good volume from it.

I don’t sound horrible, but I can hear, as you can, that it’s not the same.

So anyway, if you hate this microphone quality, you can let me know, and I’m not married to it.

I’m married to Lauren.

Anyway, so Liam’s 15th birthday.

In this house, in this family, we believe a lot of things, but we also decorate the kitchen on people’s birthdays.

And Sierra came downstairs first, as she always does, and then she saw me, and she’s like, where are the decorations?

And of course, I realized that neither Lauren nor I had put up the decorations last night.

Liam always comes down at the very last second before we have to go out to the school bus, so I was like, I’m doing it right now.

And I got those decorations up so fast that he didn’t know that we had failed to do it the night before.

I don’t feel guilty about not doing it the night before.

I was tired.

It’s okay.

His big gift for this birthday was an electric guitar that we contributed to all of his aunts and uncles and grandparents contributed to, whatever.

We also got him some silly stuff.

I can’t think of what they’re called right now, but there’s these musical instrument slash toys that look like giant music notes, and you squeeze them in different ways and make different music come from them, and they sound insane.

He wanted one of those.

It’s called like a Mellotron.

That’s not what it’s called, but it’s some weird name like that.

Got one of those.

My parents also got him a giant menorah at his request.

And the origin story of this menorah is so funny.

When I was born, I was given a big menorah.

And every year at Hanukkah, we all use our own menorahs.

And Liam was always jealous of mine because it’s tallest and he always wants to use it.

I let him use it once or twice.

I think I’ve mentioned this story before because at one point he asked, could he have mine when I died?

And I was like, sure.

But I knew he wanted a big one of his own.

And so I found one and showed it to him and he liked it.

And my parents got it for him.

And actually, when we were unboxing it today to wrap, Lauren and I were noting, it doesn’t look like he takes Hanukkah candles.

It looks like he takes giant Shabbat candles, like really big ones.

We’d be pricier than Hanukkah candles.

But then we saw that it’s actually built to accommodate both.

You can use regular Hanukkah candles or bigger candles.

Amazing.

So he’s going to love that when he unboxes it because I’m guessing he’s forgotten all about it.

And it’s even bigger than mine.

It’s taller than mine.

And he’s going to be just thrilled.

And I don’t know.

I was talking to a friend recently who had had like his 58th birthday, I believe.

And I was like, how was your birthday?

And he’s, you know, at my age, you’re mostly just counting down to retirement.

And I was like, I get that.

I think I was counting down to retirement from around my second ever day of work.

But I understand that people don’t always like love their birthdays.

People who dread their birthdays.

They don’t want to be the center of attention or they don’t like to think about getting older or they get depressed thinking about the passage of time, whatever.

I get all that.

It’s still cool to be alive.

Deep insights for me.

It’s, I think, worth it to celebrate being alive.

I love saying happy birthday to people.

I realize there’s some people who I literally, my entire text chain with them is my saying happy birthday to them this year.

If I see that the last text I send them is happy birthday, I will usually say something like annual tradition, colon, happy birthday, exclamation point.

The late great, great-ish Paul Rubens was known for celebrating people’s birthdays a lot.

He would send like 12 text messages in a day to his friends.

I don’t do that because I think people would find it annoying.

I think Pee Wee Herman can get away with it, but I can’t.

But I like saying happy birthday to people.

Sometimes they’ll say in response, hey, you know, when’s your birthday?

But I don’t judge whether you say happy birthday to me.

Of course, I think my birthday is a tricky time for some people because it’s often right around Thanksgiving and so they’re not always thinking about it, which I get.

But I like birthdays.

I especially like kid birthdays.

It’s a bummer to me whenever my kid’s birthday is around a school day because I want to see him all day and can’t.

But we are taking Liam out for a steak dinner tonight at his request.

And he does have a handful of gifts and Lauren is at Costco right now getting him a cake because Liam loves that Costco cake.

Anyway, Costco cake used to be my nickname in college.

I hope you’re having a wonderful Thursday.

Happy birthday if you are Liam or my other pal John.

And I’ll talk to you soon.

Goodbye.

Lex.