The cake was pretty yummy. It was chocolate and had about two centimetres of icing on top of it. Very, very sweet. The trouble with sweet foods is that the taste can only linger in your mouth for so long before it fades away, leaving you wanting more.

I used to love my birthday because it was so close to Halloween. I remember dressing up as a little girl and going door-to-door with a bunch of other kids trick-or-treating. I wonder what happened to all those costumes. I know I had a Little Red Riding Hood cape, a black cat costume, and a jack-o-lantern costume. My mom made those costumes too.

I remember the Little Red Riding Hood cape was made with this heavy velvety material. I kept feeling choked because the material was so heavy that the strings that tied it together across my neck kept pulling back on my throat. Professional cape-making involves the art of balancing the front weight with the back, I guess.

The jack-o-lantern costume was pretty hilarious too, as I recall. We had a stuffing problem. Originally (if my memory serves me right), we were going to just stuff pillows under it to plump me up like a pumpkin. But, I think gravity proved to be a force too strong and the pillows would not stay in. And so I went as a very skinny jack-o-lantern.

Times were indeed very different back then. Ah, the good ol' days.