Getting Older Is Bad Enough

Don’t Jump The Gun, I Still Have Another Month

October 18, 2025

Hi everyone
A few weeks ago, I said I would elaborate on some of the stories I tell on stage with The Lightfoot Band.
I will get to that soon, but today I’m going to relate a new story. Maybe I’ll tell it at one of the shows next week. We have three in a row here in southern Ontario, beginning on Wednesday in Peterborough. Thursday’s show is in Newmarket and Friday’s is in Guelph.

Cumpleaños Feliz

Have you ever gone to a restaurant on your birthday and the person you’re with tells the waiter it’s your special day?
I’m a low-profile guy. I don’t like drawing attention (I know, I know …. I’m in the wrong business). I don’t remember the year exactly, 2007 or 2008, but a female friend took me to a Chi Chi’s Mexican restaurant as a birthday present. 
She said it was an accident ….. just a passing comment to a waiter. But, in the five minutes it took for me to visit the men’s room, an assemblage of five or six staff members had gathered at my table. One was holding a cheese burrito with a candle in it.
Before I could even sit down, they were singing Happy Birthday in phonetic Spanish (actually, it could have been Elbonian for all I knew, it was that bad). 
It ended with a lame “OLE!” as the rest of the room looked on in amusement. It was so embarrassing. 

You Think That Was Bad

Gord and I were born 15 years and one day apart. His birthday was Nov. 17, and mine was a day later on the 18th. 
We were doing a week of shows at our mecca, Massey Hall in Toronto, in the fall of 2009. Opening night, Nov.18, someone in the crowd yelled, “Happy Birthday, Gord!”
“That was yesterday,” he said, “Today it’s Mike’s.”
A chill went up my spine. Massey Hall can seat over twenty-five hundred people, and that night it was a sell-out. 
They started singing Happy Birthday to me!
I turned around on my piano bench and faced the back wall until Rick pointed out that it wasn’t very polite. 
I took a bow and said Thank you.

I can’t be sure, but I think I saw a sly little grin on Gord’s face.