Happy _th Birthday, Mom!

It was the day before Mom’s birthday and since we were going to be away the following day, I had baked her a cake for a surprise.  Junior was helping me put the candles in the cake, and rather than try to find the right number I just chose a bunch that matched each other.  Meanwhile Junior went to ask Mom how old she was going to be.
“I’ll be fifty-two.”
Junior returned.
“Well Mom’s birthday isn’t till tomorrow, so I guess we need fifty-one candles.”
I had found ten and stuck them in a circle in the top of the round cake.  It was obvious that there weren’t fifty-one, but Junior wanted to count them anyway.  He got to eleven before he realized he had lost track of the first one.  So I told him I’d help: I would turn the cake while he counted.  This time he got up to fifteen before he realized something was up.  Too bad- if we had kept it up I’m sure we could have gotten to fifty-one.  Or fifty-two.