Thanks but no thanks, Mom

It was his birthday.  He was twelve years old.  Only one more year to be a kid I thought. Only one more year until the big teenage years would hit. We had already done the breakfast-in-bed thing at home and I had already sung the "Happy, happy birthday, Aaron" song  in my most obnoxious, raspy voice to wake him on his birthday morning. Then, it was off to school for the day. (It's such a shame that we have to go to school, or work on our birthdays.)  Anyway, I decided to take him lunch to school. I usually did that for the kids when it was their birthday.  When the kids were in elementary school, I would take cupcakes or cookies or something like that so they could share with the class. That was before the days of school systems not allowing parents to bring in home baked items to school and before the ban on baked "junk foods" at school. As the kids got older, I would just usually take a special lunch to them on their special day, then we would celebrate at home later that day.

I ran to the Subway Sandwich shop and picked up a Pizza sub. to take to Aaron at the middle school.  I also picked up a bouquet of balloons and tied them onto a bag of Starburst candy.  Starburst was one of the birthday boys favorite kinds of candy. When I arrived at the middle school, I went to the front office and had them call him up so I could deliver his surprise to him. 

Aaron was glad to see me and tickled especially to see the Sub sandwich. It didn't take him long to take hold of the Subway Sandwich Shop's sack that his birthday lunch was in. He was also happy to get the Starburst candy.  That was icing on the cake for his birthday lunch but much to my surprise, he declined the balloons. 

I'm not sure what I was thinking.  I guess I wasn't thinking. He was in middle school and much too big to be carrying around a bouquet of balloons at school even if it did have a bag of Starburst candy tied onto the end of it.  I think the balloons sort of embarrassed him. So, I gave him the pizza sub from Subway and the Starburst candy and brought the balloons back home. On the short drive home, I thought...at this age, two out of three is probably not so bad. At the same time, and with a sigh,  I also thought...he's growing up way too fast for my liking.