I turned 18 in the last month, and my friends held me an absolutely wonderful surprise birthday party.
As I looked around at all of them, I was struck by how much my love of Classics has managed to infiltrate my life, and how happy I am that it has done so. My friends were dressed in togas (aka bedsheets); they sang Happy Birthday to me in Latin.
That night, after the party, I went to a Latin Language Movie Night hosted by Dr. Robert M, where we watched A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
Once the movie finished, I headed upstairs and decorated a cupcake with my houseparent, Stacey. She asked for an explanation of my decorations, and got me reading a slightly abridged (but still five-minute-long) version of Nisus and Euryalus, because my cupcake, well….
(Yeah, that’s Nisus & Euryalus in cupcake form, complete with m&m blood and whipped cream hair).
When I went back to my room, I opened my presents. My sister gifted me with a tote bag that has a lamassu (an Ancient Assyrian/Mesopotamian mythological creature) on it, which I hung with pride next to my Parthenon Panathenian Procession Ionic Freize tote bag.
I put my birthday cards on my wall next to my collage of old Classics stuff - ancient Roman marble statues, an ancient Greek dedication to the god of healing (Asclepius) asking him to protect my high school from the plague, a little cartoon of mice hiding in cheese with the ancient Greek prepositions telling me where they are, and more.
Finally, I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed with listening to Let’s Talk about Myths, Baby! It's a fantastic podcast that retells Ancient Greek & Roman myths in a way that is more accessible to people who aren’t Latin scholars. That night I listened to the third episode of Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides, and can I just say: if I am ever half as cool as Clytemnestra, my life will be complete.
All in all, I’m very happy that my passion for the Classics is something that I’ve managed to transfer out of the classroom and into my daily life, and I hope to find ways to further infuse my life with cool old stuff in the coming years! :)