Okay, so this post is late. Well, I have an excuse. As many of you have marked on your calendars, yesterday was my 28th birthday. Yes, yes, please send your congratulations my way in lieu of money order or fruit basket.

It’s funny, birthdays later on in your life. When you’re a kid, every birthday is a momentous occasion. When you turn 1, your entire family, neighborhood block, “friends” (I quote this because you can’t truly be friends with anything that doesn’t rattle, make music or give you milk at this age) and people from your parent’s work places. You get even more things that rattle or make music (therefore giving you even MORE friends) and then you have a cake placed before you that you systematically destroy much to people with camera’s pleasure. You are then shown pictures of a one year old you with cake covering every inch of your body for the rest of your life like it’s something even though everybody in the world has the same picture from their first birthday.

I’ve come to learn that birthdays in your early years are really more for your parents. It’s a celebration that they haven’t accidentally killed you for an entire year. Seriously, how many times did you have the following things happen to you your first few years of life when your parents “weren’t paying attention because ‘Dallas’ was on”:

• Fell down stairs
• Ate or drank something you shouldn’t have
• Slept in a crib containing a dangerous amount of lead based paint
• Fell into lead based paint
• Were put at the mercy of an older sibling that didn’t know it was okay to bury you alive?

Really, it was a miracle you lived through your first five years of life. Your parents deserved to be congratulated one day of the year.

So yeah, up until about your 13th birthday you are treated like a king for one day of the year. It’s the years between 14 and 16 that you start to notice somewhat of a lag in your birthday celebrations. Suddenly there isn’t so many guests at your birthday, you stop having your celebrations at the local Chuck E. Cheese and instead stay at home for the evening with a frozen pizza and a movie that you got to pick from the video rental store. (I was always a sucker for Masters of the Universe much to my family’s dismay)

Then 16 comes. Oh, man, 16! You finally get your drivers license, you get your drivers license and you get your drivers license. While I never had the party that the kids on MTV have nowadays (in fact, I would have been disowned by my parents for even asking for a party that cost more than $25), I still had quite the memorable party. All of my friends made it out to the event mainly because they wanted to make good with the first kid that they knew that would soon be able to drive. Much to their disappointment, I did not take Drivers Ed and would have to wait an entire year before terrorizing the old people walking through the park.

Of course I was disappointed too and had failed to inform said friends of my inability to drive within a few weeks of my sweet 16 and instead brought it up right after I blew out my candles. It was almost surreal watching the mass exodus of people leaving my party after my announcement. Most took their gifts back (and I later found out that the ones who didn’t take their gifts back had just given me empty boxes anyway) and went down the block to some other kids 16th birthday party, hoping to get good face time with someone who actually WAS going to get their license.

So then suddenly you’re in the 17-20 phase where once again, you start to realize that your birthday doesn’t really matter. Of course your parents still wish you well on your special day (possibly still congratulating themselves for not killing you for another year) but your friends start to stop giving a crap. Sure you might get a free meal at Denny’s on these days, but something just seems to be missing.

The next year everything changes. You are suddenly 21, my friend. Alcoholic drink after alcoholic drink is poured down your throat and you wake up in a weird place the next day (mine was Iowa). You also start to notice that much like your first birthday party you have pictures taken of you doing things that you don’t later remember. Of course like the pictures from your first birthday, everyone else has the exact same picture of themselves in existence. The only difference is these pictures can actually be used AGAINST you in a court of law.

So now I am finding myself in another gray zone. I’m at the age where there is very little fanfare for my birthday again and I am instead grilled about why I am not married yet since I’m, “getting up there in years”. I am starting to understand why people complain about getting older, it’s just another year that they haven’t really accomplished a lot of things. At least you still get the free dinner at Denny’s.

I guess all I have to look forward to now is my 40th birthday. That’s the mid way point in life anyway so you have to have a celebration where everybody reminds you that you are now about to enter the second half of life…oh, and that you’ll probably die soon. At least you start to pick up on the number of party guests again. What, with everyone wanting to see if you do something funny (i.e. teeth falling out, pooping your pants) so they can say that, "they were there when it happened", when the video shows up on AFV.

So yeah, Happy Birthday to me. My parents didn’t kill me for another year (and didn’t have me killed) and I still got my free dinner at Denny’s. Maybe 28 isn’t too bad.

Copyright © 2006 Ray Tice
Please do not remove the copyright from this work.

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