Fandom: Life on Mars
Rating: G
Word Count: 355 words
Notes: For
duckyone, who said "A large helping of gen, heavy on the Sam. Let's see, dialogue prompt, Sam: It's my birthday today." Title is from Yeats' "To Ireland in the Coming Times".“It’s my birthday today.”
“I’ll bake you a cake.”
*
He’s never had a problem with growing older. Age is not a worry.
So what, if the days have gone by and he’s not done this or that? He can do it tomorrow. He’s always had every confidence in his ability to do things on the eventual up-turn. That’s not to say he’s not driven, because he is – he is the definition of driven on any given weekday. But, because he’s so driven, he knows that whatever he sets his mind on will get done, so it’s not a concern if it hasn’t yet happened.
He’s not been worried about lines on his face, or his voice getting deeper, or his nose growing longer, or his muscles not being as firm as they once were. That’s what life does. He’s accepted it. Bodies change. Of course, so far, age has actually been a benefit to his body. He’s grown in all the right places.
He’s never been disturbed by the notion of his place in society shifting, or wanting it to shift, or being surprised when it didn’t. Perhaps he hasn’t yet reached the age when this would occur. Some seem to get to thirty and immediately expect life to have meaning. He’s always given his life meaning, though it might’ve been in a different language for a while.
He has uttered the phrase ‘when I were a lad’ once or twice, but he’d like to think he said it with his tongue firmly placed in his cheek. “When I were a lad, I had a strika, not a chopper.”
It’s not the growing older part of his birthday which he hates. It’s the growing older here, in 1973, the wrong time and place. It’s sinister, he thinks. Strange. He shouldn’t be able to grow older, to have a birthday. The months shouldn’t pass. The seasons shouldn’t change. But he does, and they do, and he’s stuck with it.
*
"Happy Birthday to You,
Happy Birthday to You,
You’ve a pole shoved up your arse
And you look like it too."
“Thanks, boys. No. Really.”
