Our Birthdays are 4 days apart and when we were in High School we used to get together and watch movies all night for our birthday.
This was when movies were on VHS. Do you remember "Be Kind, Rewind"?
We would pick a day to celebrate that would work best. And we would go to the video store together to pick out the 5 or 6 movies we were going to watch. I remember it as usually 5. We got a variety of movie styles and after a while we got good at knowing what to pick out and what order to watch them in. (We did all night movie nights on more than just our birthdays.)
We had it down to a "science". We watched the first movie. Then we had pizza. If we were lucky it was homemade pizza that Vel Rae made! (the best!) After that we just settled in with snacks and watched movies until the sun came up. It was a lot of fun. I never was able to watch movies all night long like that with anyone else.
There was something fun and unique about staying up all night until the sun rose again and still watching movies. The deep movies seemed deeper somehow. The comedies funnier. The snacks tastier.
We had some really great discussions about the movies. And sometime the discussions were not even about the movies. We really connected.
And it was a lot easier to stay up for 36 hours when we were in our late teens and early 20's.
I will always miss Matt. And I will always miss him a bit more on his birthday. I know thats not original or anything. But it sure is true.