My birthday is the Fourth of July, which is a lousy birthday in the US because everything is either closed or mobbed, and drunk drivers are a big problem.

The summer I turned eighteen I had a job in the gift shop of a water park, and, of course, attendance skyrocketed on the 4th so everyone had to work. I got the 4:00 pm-to-midnight shift with a couple of guys named Jeb and Eric. Jeb was the assistant manager, a clean-cut, athletic, churchgoing, all-American. Eric was a chain-smoking death-metal afficionado who attended an alternative high school and had been driving since the age of 12 but had never had a license; not the kind of guy you would expect to care one way or the other about holidays or birthdays.

When everyone had finally cleared out of the park, around 1:30, the boss said we'd have to do a quick inventory because holidays were always big shoplifting days (because we were so busy). Everybody groaned. But when we all got back to the gift shop, instead, there was a birthday cake and a couple of cards for me.

The boss told me later that she had been afraid all day long that Eric would blow their cover because he was so excited about surprising me that he could hardly stop talking about it. I thought that was very endearing; I've always been sorry I lost track of him after the summer ended.