the arrival?

I walked into the lab, expecting another typical day at work, but found it strangely crowded.  Aside from the handful of familiar faces, there were several people in there I didn't know.  They were all mostly middle-aged men wearing white shirts and ties.

"What's going on in here?", I asked a random tie.

"It's someone's birthday", he explained.  "There's cake."

Ah, cake.  Of course.  Then I realized it was MY birthday.  My 21st birthday, in fact.  The year was nineteen eighty-*COUGH*

I elbowed my way through the crowd and found Mary, my co-worker/sister from another mister.  She and our other coworker Martie wished me happy birthday.  Mary was holding a cake she'd brought for the occasion, and she set it down and handed me a knife to begin cutting.

I began to make the initial cut while the crowd of strangers waited, but nothing was happening.  Either I had the dullest knife or this was the driest cake in history.

But then Mary and Martie began to snicker, then full-out laugh.  This wasn't cake.  It was a big sponge covered in icing.  Okay, I thought it was pretty funny, but I don't think all those random engineers were as amused.  Thankfully, the ladies brought out a real cake, and everyone was happy again.

We worked 2nd shift in a quality control lab, which was why we didn't typically rub elbows with many salaried people other than 2nd shift technicians.  After the cake, the ties left, and things returned to the normal quiet.   

This throwback photo is from that evening:

L to R: Stan, our 2nd shift engineer; Brad the technician, who was also my boyfriend at the time; me with my sponge-cake; Mary; Rod, the poor male inspector who had to work with all us females (yes, our menstrual cycles did sync); and Martie.

It's kinda funny to look at this old lab photo with those "state of the art" computers and ashtrays and cigarettes.  The photo was taken with a Polaroid because film pictures were not allowed from inside the lab.  Consider yourself privy to former corporate secret sponge cake!

Brad and the girls took me out for drinks after work - my first legal alcoholic beverage.  

Twenty-one didn't necessarily feel much different from twenty at that point.  But a little over a month later, I was with Brad at a New Year's Eve party.  Despite his serious look in the photo above, Brad was a pretty happy-go-lucky guy.  We got along well and were quite compatible, but I wasn't interested in anything too serious.  He was, I think, 25 at the time.  

So we were at this party at the home of some friends of his - a nice couple in their late 20's.  I remember the house being tasteful and that the woman did watercolors in her spare time.  In addition to the new year, we were also celebrating another page turner:  Brad's divorce from his first wife had just been finalized.

I remember standing in this tasteful house at a tasteful party, while talking with the hostess about her watercolors, being there with my boyfriend who had an ex-wife, and I was sipping champagne from an actual glass - not a red Solo®️ cup.  

*OMG, I'm so grownup...*

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Linking up this week with Mama Kat for the prompt:

2. A moment you realized you were a grown up.