So, my birthday was Saturday, and if I could have had my wish granted in advance, the day would’ve passed unnoticed–no cards, no cake, no opening sentence in a column announcing it. Ha! Ha! Ha!
My aversion to my birthday (and, certainly, to yours as well) doesn’t stem from any hackneyed fear of growing old. I actually can’t wait to be old, if for no reason than to see how my gastrointestinal issues will manage to top themselves.
Rather, it’s that this is the one “holiday” that never fails to prove a major letdown in all its phases: the lead-up, the actual day and the aftermath.
The lead-up: Depending on one’s level of self-absorption, a person typically begins contemplating an upcoming birthday two to six weeks beforehand. Shaquille O’Neal begins 51 weeks beforehand, but, in fairness, it takes the laborers a while to build his annual Egyptian-style pyramid gift to himself.
We spend this pre-birthday period fretting over how another year has gone by without accomplishing much (in my case, not convincing my wife we should eat every meal off disposable paper plates). We start getting angry at our loved ones for not obsessively following our hobbies and knowing what newly released products match them.
And because no one’s throwing us parties at Chuck E. Cheese’s anymore, we begin planning how we want our friends to celebrate ourselves. Although, if it’s a Big Birthday coming up, we may become concerned a surprise party is in the works. (Only a few people actually like surprise birthday parties; they are Joshua Kuller of Menlo Park, Calif.; Andrew Kassakian of Wrentham, Mass.; and Colin Carballo of Perrysburg, Ohio.)
The actual day: Mom and dad call. And then we hear from the same two friends who call every year. These should be the friends we appreciate most, but, oddly, they’re the cause of more resentment than those who always forget. “What a surprise. It’s Ted again, right on schedule.”
As the day goes by, feeling a growing sense of loneliness, we keep expecting something different to happen. Like maybe our cubicle chair will feel like a more expensive model. The worst mistake we can make is to start telling everyone around us it’s our birthday; it just makes everyone feel awkward. “Oh, well, hey, Happy Birthday! Here are some, uh, Post-it notes.”
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Then nighttime comes. It’s time for a dinner out, where we hate it if “Happy Birthday” is sung and a dessert we never would have chosen is brought out, but we hate it more if those things don’t happen.
Later, at home, we get a gift from a loved one followed by a small fight about it. No one, by the way, is given a new car, wholly out of the blue, like you see in commercials. At best, we get a cute note that says, “I want you to get that new car you’ve always dreamed about,” which leads to the purchase of a Honda Civic.
The aftermath: And, just like that, it’s over. There’s nothing to look forward to, nothing to enjoy in the moment, and we find ourselves wanting to replay a day we didn’t even enjoy and get another free dessert and call from Ted.
So, we just sit there, feeling no different. Nothing has been accomplished, and we realize there was no reason for any of this–the self-obsession, the loneliness, and, if we’re Shaq, the live burial of another set of servants and pets in our new pyramid.
So, in case you had any inclination to do so, please don’t think about my birthday, which was Saturday.
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