Can I tell you something?
I don’t like birthdays. Not because I resent growing old – I consider it a privilege – but because it’s one more day of enforced merriment on my crowded social calendar. I’m booked solid for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve – three’s a crowd, right? – and I don’t need or want any more merriment. And please don’t get me started on the artificial holiday fun surrounding Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco De Mayo, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, and Halloween. Those are for amateurs who don’t have the stamina to party day in and day out.
But I’m talking about birthdays here and including family and friends there are literally scores of them to celebrate.
That said, I reserve most of my scorn for the birthday of yours truly.
Perhaps it was an extreme example of planned parenthood, but as luck would have it, I was born on the day of my sister’s fourth birthday. My untimely arrival blew up her party and precipitated roughly fifteen years of party scheduling conflicts and barely suppressed resentment.
I’ve chronicled those years in another post, but for the purposes of this essay let me just say that my birthday parties, even when I was age appropriate for such affairs, felt strained and ultimately unsatisfying because it was never clear whether my sister or I got the better day and time slot, party favors and decorations, presents, or cake.
But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.
Birthday parties are fine for kids but I think adults celebrating theirs is weird. I’ll concede that women who call in sick and treat themselves to a day spa complete with champagne and a limo full of friends are within their rights, and gay men who party like it’s New Year’s Eve 1999 get a pass too, but any straight man over the age of twenty-one who insists on being feted with cake and ale just because he managed to survive another year without dying in a Jackass-inspired catapult incident, is, in my book, a big baby.
This is not to say I’ve never had an adult birthday party. Actually, I never have had an “adult” birthday party and wish to God I had, but I have had several birthday parties as an adult. Only one of which was my idea. It was my 20th birthday – technically not a violation of my own rule – but because the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles had made a clerical error in my favor and issued a driver’s license stating my birth year as 1955 not 1956, it was effectively my 21st birthday. So, I think you can understand why I threw myself a big bash. The next year I admit attempting a redux, which failed miserably to live up to the prior year, but for every year thereafter parties celebrating my birthday were not my doing.
Before you label me the biggest birthday party pooper of all time and swipe this essay from your life, let me make clear that there have been many years I’ve enjoyed myself on my birthday.
My 30th was an impromptu affair at a good friend’s house where we watched Sugar Ray Leonard beat Marvin Hagler on Pay-Per-View and drank a bunch of great wine from his basement. The fact the wine was being cellared for a neighbor and didn’t belong to Bill in no way diminished my enjoyment of the occasion.
On my 50th my wife Lori surprised me with a huge party at our recently opened school Oregon Culinary Institute. The birthday book she presented with scribbled best wishes from our friends and employees was so sweet I cried. But what were the employees going to say, really?
I won’t share any details and apologize for the disturbing imagery, but there have also been many years when Lori, always generous in the gift giving department, threw a party where I was encouraged to wear my birthday suit. I suppose they qualified as adult birthday parties but not in the sense I imagined when I was 20. Still, they were very enjoyable and memorable. Again, this may be TMI, but two days ago I turned 67 and it was decided my birthday suit doesn’t fit as well as it used to.
But that’s not what I wanted to tell you either.
If you are among the vast majority of people who enjoy celebrating birthdays, including your own, I am truly sorry for this screed and my self-styled sang-froid regarding the subject. By all means join with friends and family, open cards and presents, blow out the candles, have a good cry if there are too many in your estimation, and let them eat cake.
Who was the genius that came up with the idea it would be fun to celebrate birthdays at work? With rare exception, these people are not your friends. In many cases they’re people you secretly can’t stand, and a few are probably sworn enemies. The fact they chipped in a buck for a present and signed a banal birthday card saying something like, “It’s better to be over the hill than under it” doesn’t make it any less weird. Actually, more so.
Bottom line, does eating grocery store sheet cake in the copy room with a handful of co-workers who don’t give a shit about you or your birthday but just want to take an unauthorized break to fill their cakehole sound like a party to you?
If you haven’t seen the cult classic movie Office Space, you absolutely should. And pay special attention to the office birthday party scene.
But what I really wanted to tell you is this.
My birthday, October 4th, is also National Vodka Day. Now that’s something to celebrate!
Thanks for listening. Talk soon.
Thank you for rubbing it in, Jack. And may I add that was a very clever ruse to fool Father Time. But however many famous people you must occasionally share your birthday with, nobody, not George or Abe or Millard Fillmore, could ever make yours as uncomfortable as Karen did mine.
As I recall, he wasn't all that happy. But I can't remember where my car keys are let alone 37 years ago.