Bummer
March 23rd 2010 by admin in 1I’ve never really enjoyed having birthdays, and I’ve got worse with age. A birthday, to me, is not dissimilar to a particularly irritating varicose vein.
My main reason for not being bothered is this: is the birth day that special? A day filled with pain, misery and blood (not to mention all kinds of weird liquids that come from all kinds of weird places). If I had the opportunity to exchange the birthday for another day, I think I would make it the day of conception. That just seems to make more sense to me, since that’s the day when everything started.
But even people who don’t particularly like their own birthdays like to feel special, you know? The last thing I want to get on my birthday is a feeble-looking text. A badly written one at that. Could there be anything more impersonal?
Maybe it’s just me being old-fashioned, but I’d like to receive a few more phone-calls on my birthday. That’d be nice. Text messages are all good and well, but they aren’t the same as hearing someone’s happy voice proclaiming how important your birthday is for them and the rest of humanity, are they?
And it isn’t just text messages, no. In fact, text messages seem astoundingly polite compared to messages cropping up on Facebook. It might seem that people think of you extra fondly when they write to you on Facebook, but here’s why it’s the opposite: Facebook tells them and anyone within a million mile radius it is your birthday. Hence, there’s nothing particularly special about someone ‘remembering’. Because it isn’t remembering, and that’s the point.