07.26
I love birthdays. I think it’s the one day of the year where you have your own personal National Holiday.
People should just randomly start to love you. Give you things. Tell you how great you are.
For me on my birthday I don’t care if you are bleeding to death from a hole in your penis- you smile and mean it when you say happy birthday!!! And I smile back because you made me smile and I hand you a band-aid!
Sunday was my boyfriend’s birthday. He turned 23! Wee!!
But this year, same as last year, he wasn’t happy. He begged me not to make the servers at Olive Garden sing to him. But I made them anyway.
We love Olive Garden. It’s the exception to the chain restaurant rule. So it’s now a tradition (or should be) that on his birthday we act like tourists and run around the city. Like last year we went to FAO Schwartz, but because we were nocturnal it was closed by the time we got there.
We went to the Empire State Building, then to Olive Garden, but he still wasn’t happy then either. And this year the same, even though we were a little less touristy, which is even more of reason to be gleeful.
We got home and for the second time in his life he beat me in Scrabble. Maybe it was karmic gift from the Scrabble gods seeing the above-mentioned holiday.
Still no happiness.
As we’re going to bed, still no happiness. I’d sung happy birthday so many times already that I was starting to annoy myself and as always, the second my head hits the pillow, I’m out like a light.
There is always a very small piece of me that says, “God it sucks getting older.” I almost always have sucky birthdays. I get things I don’t want and I’m stuck with people that consider me to be the coolest but the feeling isn’t necessarily mutual and I drink to spite myself or my age and realize I have accomplished nothing.
I go to bed thinking, I am __ yrs old and I have done nothing. I can’t say, But I’m only __ anymore.
Or complain about being too young to have to deal with things because now I’m __ years and there are very few excuses left. I roll over and wonder what other people my age are doing and how many of them had to go to work when they were 17 to pay their own rent and buy their own food. I start to feel cheated. Then I think, Well, I never had to complain about my parents at least.
For Christian, birthdays should be happy. He’s accomplished stuff in the last year. He wrote a short film. He wrote a short story. We live together and own a bed together. He finished another year of school.
But when he went to bed Sunday night with his sad birthday self I wonder if he thought the same things I did. If everyone does. Even though birthdays should be happy, it marks another successfully completed year of life and life is good.
Wee!
It made me feel like I failed some how in not making his birthday happy. Not making it gleeful. Like a five-year-old girl getting the coolest toy on the market.
Great writing… i have to say shes a catchy one
Birthdays are always fun. I despise it every year, the gifts, phony accollades, and of course the party. I remember when I was younger, I was like, “Wow, look at all I’ve done and I’m just twenty-___,” but after a while, with no new accomplishments, that statement kind of lost meaning to me…
That was the first remotely digestable blog entry I’ve read in quite a while- thank you for having a point. I am so sick of “Yesterday I went to the mall, bought a t-shirt and a chocolate bar and was bored and decided to blog even though I have nothing to express…….” but i’m being hypocritical because I do that to. I have always loved birthdays, I just hate waking úp the next morning and thinking about the fact it’s a whole year until everyone goes out of their way to be nice to you. I’m to young to be thinking about getting older, each year is just another year towards being old enough to buy alcohol legaly for me, :)
Birthdays are great… until the 21st. After that, they’re all the same. It’s nice to get a free meal out of the deal, and see people you tend to like, and maybe even get a cool gift or whatever… but that doesn’t overcome the overwhelming sense of “blah”, and those feelings of a lack of accomplishment, and the relentless shove in the back from Father Time toward the grave.
Of course, some might like them more than others… and that can probably be determined by how many of your brithdays you actually remember. Spending two minutes to think about it right now, I can safely say I remember only two of mine – 9th (golden – and the Bears lost, ruining my Bears party) and 18th (first cigar). Oh, and 19th, which is the only birthday I can recall getting laid on. Wow, that’s sad.
Then you should have fun reading the rest of the crap on TDE, except for my stuff.
Have I ever told you about my 21st? Worst. Birthday. Ever. Great story.
My birthday IS a national holiday! In France.
I for one HATE my birthday, and I can empathise with him not wanting to make a big deal of it. Every year, I do something special for my girlfriend’s birthday. I’ve stopped sending my parents cards because I have finally given up on them remembering mine. My birthday for all of my life has been a big letdown, and I would prefer it to just be another day. I hate when servers sing happy birthday, because they expect it to be the greatest day of the year, when in fact, for a good number of us, it is our saddest.
I defenitly agree wiyh waht your saying, Birthdays are important and you have to smile to me, even if your penis is bleeding. What can I say, I Love Mary!!!!