In Case You Missed It of the Day: During the 90th birthday bash NBC threw for Betty White last night, President Obama (whose wife was also born January 17th) delivered an official birthday message to the golden girl, poking fun the infamous birth certificate conspiracy.
Transcript below:
Dear Betty,
You look so fantastic and full of energy. I can’t believe you’re 90 years old. In fact, I don’t believe it. That’s why I’m writing to ask if you will be willing to produce a copy of your long form birth certificate. Thanks, and Happy Birthday, no matter how old you are.
I talk to myself when you’re not here. I say things I would tell you. Sometimes I tell you secrets I don’t want you to know.
I imagine what you’d say if you were here. But you are not, and I don’t really want you to hear.
So I tell myself.
And then all of a sudden, I’m in a room with a hundred myselfs, and we are having a wonderful conversation. We laugh and laugh and no one argues. Sometimes one of us will get sad, but I am always there to cheer myself up. The hundreds of us, we tell stories, we share fears, we sing songs to each other—I tell myself how beautiful my voice is.
When we get tired of talking, we go upstairs to the roof and look at the stars. And when I’m staring at a particularly bright star that now I’m sure is an airplane that is headed straight for me, I start to wish one of the many me’s up on this roof were you. And if you were here, all the hundreds of me’s would disappear. Because when I am talking to you, I don’t need to be with me.
When I’m talking to you, it’s like I’m talking to me.
From the waist up, he guessed she was 50, maybe 55, but that was pushing it. Her tanned skin made her look perpetually roasted, which most likely contributed to the premature wrinkling which he based this estimate on. But then again, what did he know. He was young. His face went back to zero after he smiled, the worry lines on his forehead were as fleeting as the troubles in his life. Age was not a concern to him.
She wanted to shake him, to scream “Let me be yours!” From the waist down, she wasn’t a day over 40. Lower still, from her knees to her feet, her bare-buttered feet, the kind that seem like they haven’t been walked on for years, she was as sprightly as a middle-aged mistress. Of which she was determined to be for him. At 45, she felt young, alive, bursting with desire and affection for this man-child. She guessed him to be 25, but at her age, any distance between 20 and 30 seemed trivial.
He lives his life as if on the brink of madness—speaks too fast, eats too furiously.
He grows nightly, a body that will soon refuse to contain the chaos spreading inside. At night I imagine he dreams of swiftness—he curses, spits, sweats like a drug addict rummaging through his last bag (he would not understand this comparison, for the worst the world has yet to offer him has come in the form of wounded birds and smashed rodents on the main street.)
He turns to me now, body bursting with energy, words dangling from the tip of his tongue. I play a game, guess what he may say before he says it. The game lasts .0003 seconds, as he has already sputtered out four words: “It’s time to fly!” and off he runs. The dire need to share this with me is replaced with the necessity of action. His warmth, his inclusion of me in this desire is followed by the sting of him leaving me behind.
For I am too slow, too old, too heavy, too burdened to fly along with him.
I wish your name was something else, my handwriting better, etc etc. But you don’t exist, and neither do I, and so, there ends our short-lived, but no less life-changing love affair.
