Shopping List for a Boomer’s 40th Birthday

Things to be done today:

Buy cake.

Get wheel of Brie.

Get six baguettes--three plain, three seeded.

Lose 10 pounds.

Call caterer; cancel nachos, add crudites.

Pick up case of Sauvignon Blanc.

Get married.

Pick up Over-the-Hill cocktail napkins.

Pick up “I’m 40; You’re OK” T-shirts.

Call Mom; tell her you regret all the grief you caused her and that you love her.

Get tapes of Little Richard, Conway Twitty, Chad and Jeremy, Cream and the Eagles.

Consider possibility that Springsteen is our Al Jolson.

Mash four avocados, add chopped tomato, chopped onion, fresh cilantro.

Get two bags corn chips--one blue, one normal.

Get tapes for bunny hop, hokey-pokey and Mexican hat dance.

Remind guests of “Come as You-Were-in-’72” theme.

Pick up jeans, turtleneck, leather jacket, Frye boots, machete and peace button.

Get tapes of Bobby Kennedy reading Aeschylus and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Call caterer; cancel feta salad, add barbecued ribs.

Leave gray in hair. Toss Grecian Formula.

Get “Beatles Complete” on CD for Paul Is Dead Trivia Contest.

Cancel aerobics classes.

Sign up for low-impact.

Call Dad, tell him you will not let him down in his old age. (Don’t mention inheritance.)

Have a baby.

Make sure cleaning service will come tomorrow.

Get Elvis imitator for no-host bar.

Order strobe light.

Pick up Dobie Gillis, Ricky Nelson, Partridge Family and Spin and Marty posters.

Pick up all-terrain 20-speed bicycle.

Try out bike on flat path in park.

Don’t smile or sit out in the sun. Pick up Retin-A prescription.

Call broker; buy pharmaceuticals.

Set up Pin the Ponytail Back on James Taylor game. Get prizes--coonskin caps, mouse ears, Hula-Hoops, Duncan yo-yos and roach clips.

Put up Stop the Air War and Fillmore Ballroom posters.

Call caterer; cancel Thai shrimps.

Settle down in one career.

Call senior prom date and see if he’s married or what.

Stop watching “thirtysomething.”

Buy a house.