NO BIRTHDAY BLUES
By Marc Sotkin
I gotta tell you, Boomers, I just had a birthday, and it left me a little confused. Now you have to understand, I’ve never made a big deal about my birthday.
I guess it’s because I grew up in a family, there were five of us, and our birthdays were actually on five consecutive days. My brother and sister were born on the same date, three years apart. How’d you like that for your third birthday, something to take all the attention away from you?
Sixty-six years later and my sister still hasn’t completely gotten over it. Anyway, the next day was my father’s birthday. The next day was my mother’s. Then we skipped a day. Then we had my birthday.
When astrologers hear about this they have like a Galileic orgasm. “Wow, a house full of Capricorns. Do you know what that means?” Yeah. It means that by the time my birthday rolled around even I was tired of cake and as a kid I learned that piñatas are almost impossible to break if they’ve been duct-taped back together.
To make matters worse, our birthdays fall right after the holidays. So my birthday was like, Happy Birthday, Kid, here’s a cupcake and a candle and sometimes the presents came wrapped in Santa Claus gift wrap.
And when I was ten, my father gave me a necktie. That felt like he didn’t put in a lot of effort. But, other than that, I never felt deprived. Birthdays just have never been a big deal for me. All they mean is that I’m getting older. And like most of us, I’m not that crazy about the aging process. I mean my parents used to measure me each year on my birthday to see if I had grown. Now I measure myself to see if I’ve started to shrink.
Anyway, here’s my birthday confusion. For the past few years, I’ve actually been a little down on my birthday. I mean, I know I should be thrilled that now I can get the senior discount on all the pancakes I want at IHOP, but still…I wish my knees wouldn’t crack when the temperature drops below forty. You know what I mean?
Well, this year, a few days before my birthday, my wife decides that the reason I don’t care about birthdays is because I’ve never really got to celebrate. And this year, she decides, we were going to celebrate. She is going to take me dancing. Dancing? I ask. I was fine with renting a movie and falling asleep on the couch with a party hat on. And the party hat was really more for her benefit.
No way, she says, I was going to have fun whether I liked it or not.
Well, as it turns out, I liked it. We went to this club, and they played a lot of great old-school music, and we danced, and we danced, and we danced till we couldn’t move anymore. And it was the best birthday I can remember. We celebrated. And it was a great reminder. It’s too easy sitting around waiting to get old. You’ve got to get off the couch and dance.
Now I’m kind of looking forward to my next birthday. I think we’re actually going to have a party and my wife says if I’m good I can have pony rides and maybe a clown. Cool, huh? That’s what I think.
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