Hot Pink is a regular column on nzgirl that's sure to have you in stiches! Don't miss your weekly fix.
To find out all about its author, Penny Ashton, just click here
It’s 4 am and you’re singing Smells Like Teen Spirit with your sister on Karaoke while your father complains that they don’t make music like they used to. He doesn’t take to kindly to being told that his argument is redundant as that song is now 15 years old and a legend in its own right, and wrestles the microphone away to sing My Way.
Ahh yes it’s my mother’s 60th birthday party bash in Christchurch.
It can be a scary moment when you realise your mother is turning 60. I remember when I was a kid 60 seemed SO old. It was only a hop skip and a jump to incontinence pants, moving to Tauranga and using your teeth to chew your food outside your mouth.
However as I am now half way to 60 I realise this couldn’t be further from the truth. Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine and Amway vitamins, 60 is the new 40 and Ma is still looking fighting fit and has all her own gnashers.
In fact my mother has fabulous skin and hardly any grey hairs so most people are shocked to discover she’s 60 at all. (Knowing my luck I’ll get Dad’s genes and be bald at 45.) BUT it was still a reason to throw a big bash and family were summoned from all over the globe. Well at least New Zealand and Australia anyway.
My sister and I planned a surprise speech and bought a pampering treatment of massage, manicure, pedicure, facial, eyebrow shape and champers and were very excited to surprise the woman who thankfully decided she wanted kids.
Family friends poured in the door with presents, (mostly facials, massages and manicures….how original) and we all got down to the serious business of drinking champagne. Well, no actually that was mostly me. but I managed to keep it together till speech time.
We saluted one of Christchurch’s truly most generous community minded individuals by telling stories of how she dropped me on my head when I was a baby and didn’t notice that I was dangling from a car door as she drove off when I was six. I only cried a bit when thanking her for being on every committee that had anything to do with us and for basically just ALWAYS being there (even if she was flinging me out of car doors at the time).
She hated all the attention and asked everyone to stop saying nice things about her because she felt like she was at her own funeral. Ahhhh how kiwi is that? (Well less so as she’s actually Aussie but you get my point.) The serious champagne drinking began.
Then all of a sudden it was 4am (surprisingly for a 60th) and it was Bon Jovi versus Jerry Lee Lewis. Some of you might think that as it was a 60th people would prefer the latter, but in my drunken state I knew the truth.
YOUR Love is like Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad Medicine, bad medicine is all I need….
Penny
If you Want to See Some original, innovative kiwi work head down to Speakeasy, the Alternative Open Mic night at the Classic Comedy Bar, 321 Queen St, 8pm, Entry Gold Coin, Hosted by Yours Truly, Tuesday 11th April.
Last updated: 30/04/2008
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