I love my birthday. I’m turning 20 this weekend, and being so young it still means more to me than being ‘a year closer to death.’ I usually like people to know it’s my birthday, but i really hate being sung to, getting gifts from anyone other than my parents, or people paying excessive attention to me. I always like to treat myself, and just enjoy the friends around me joining in on a crazy weekend.
I generally don’t like my birthdays. Each year I look back and see all the things I’ve failed to do- and know that the time’s getting shorter.
I’ve never really had a birthday party- I tend to make a few, close friends, and so there’s never enough people. Plus, the friends I do have, for whatever reason, have never thrown me a surprise party- although I’ve always wanted one.
Add to that the fact that both my wife and my mother have, on seperate years, completely forgotten my birthday, and, well, I just don’t have any good memories.
Birthdays are just a reminder that, absent efforts to change, I’m becoming older, pudgier, uglier, and balder. They remind me of how much time I’ve wasted in my life.
Birthdays bring back memories of exclusion, envy, and embarassment. I don’t like being singled out, even by well-meaning but oblivious people who don’t take my protests to the contrary seriously. And having the Birthday Song sung at me is torture.
I ignore my birthdays; I prefer to concentrate on the steps I’m taking to become fitter and more artistically successful.
My birthday has always been a bit of a non-event - it’s on Christmas Eve, and tends to get lost in the Christmas madness that consumes society at that time. The problem of “just getting one gift” was not the issue for me, although it happened a lot, but it was that reletives would come and celebrate with me on the actual day, but you could sense that their minds were runnng through their “to do” lists at the same time. In addition, living in the Southern Hemisphere as I did as a child, my birthday always fell in the middle of the six-week summer holidays, and my friends were inevitably away. This meant that there was never any point in having a birthday party near my actual birthday, and so I would usually have one some time in August and my childhood photo albums are filled with photos labelled “6 [sup]1[/sup]/[sub]2[/sub] year birthday party” by my mother. It never felt like a real birthday to me…
As I grew up, the significance of my birthdays dwindled, I just didn’t see any point in celebrating an event that was far removed from the actual event we were meant to be celebrating, or having a party with key friends missing. When I met my wife, to whom birthdays are massively important as they are the only time when her parents would be together (divorced and re-married), she was determined to change things, and has gone to a great deal of effort to make them special - just one of the reasons I love her
Grim
They are just one more indicator of the inevitable approach of yawning oblivion. I fear birthdays - actively.
Oh brother.
Years ago, I was in the production department of a free show. An American Film Institute senior project, to be precise. It was a big whoop-de-doo (note to film-biz wannabes: do not work for AFI students; they think they’re doing you a favor) and I put up with a lot of crap from the higher-ups, like when I was locking up the set outdoors in February rain and they interpreted my request to change places with someone who was locking up indoors, just for ten minutes so I could thaw out, as a request to abandon my post entirely. NOT!
Anyway, there were kids in this film. Three days from the end of shooting, the main girl’s mom comes into the production office and announces that her little girl is having a birthday on Saturday (we were scheduled to, and did, wrap on Thursday) and she would like us to get Daughter a birthday cake.
Saturday was also my birthday. Omigod! That’s my birthday too! See, look at my license!
UPM says, "Okay, Rilch, why don’t you go out to Ralph’s and get a birthday cake for Daughter. Oh, and also get a cake that says, “Thank You, Actress Who Was Recently In A Hit Film, For Deigning To Give Your Valuable Time To Our Show.”
Huh? I thought. They can’t be that rude. Mmmmmmaybe…they want to get me away from set so they can hand around a card and have everyone sign it? At any rate, if I balk at this, the reaction will surely be “Gee, Rilch, you’re not a team player, are you?”
So I haul ass to Ralph’s and get two cakes with appropriate writing: no small effort, especially the bit with getting a Spanish-speaking bakery clerk to properly spell a Chinese name. Return to set. At first meal, lights are shut off and Actresses are brought downstairs where entire crew is singing HBTY and cakes are blazing with candles.
Well, after all, I’m not in the cast. But surely I’ll be recognized some kind of way, right?
Comes the last day of shooting, during which I do a slow burn. Finally prompt the UPM that, since I’d gone to all the trouble of getting two cakes, one for someone whose birthday was the same day as mine, I should expect a card or cupcake at wrap…RIGHT?!
“Rilch…Those cakes were to compensate people who would normally be making $536 dollars a day! And besides, one of the electrics had a birthday last week; he worked fourteen hours and we couldn’t do anything for him!”
Made note to self that the next time I had to handle deal memos, I would mark any birthdays among the crew, and honor them appropriately.
Unfortunately, someone overheard me venting to a friend in what I thought was a secluded location, and ran to ask the producer, “How could you be so mean to Rilch?”
Producer:
a) vented right back to director about who I must think I was
b) promised to take me to lunch on my birthday, which I knew she wouldn’t do
c) was heard to mutter to her SO, when I called on Saturday, solely for the sake of reminded her of her BS promise (do not make false promises to Rilchiam; she will jam them back down your throat) “I don’t wanna talk to her”.
Six months later, encounter UPM. This time, he’s willing to listen. Points raised:
- (His) Perhaps it shouldn’t have been production’s responsibility to honor Daughter’s birthday, especially since it actually took place after filming.
- (His) There were other children in the cast, who he did notice were not too thrilled about Daughter’s extra recognition.
- (Mine) A handshake and card would have been appropriate recognition for me, the electrician, or anyone below the line. Anything other than an outright dis.
- (Mine) Sending someone out to get a birthday cake for someone whose Bday is the same as their own is the dictionary definition of chutzpah.
- (Mine) After the AFI show, I’d been on one show where a production assistant(!) was honored with a cake on her Bday, and another where, first the art department “designed” a cake for their leader, then three prop cakes were brought in for a scene and subsequently retired to craft service, then the producer’s wife honored us with a cake from her restaurant at the wrap party. Conclusion: People can get caked out. Cards, on the other hand, can be saved and treasured.
- (His) Some people, like him and grimpixie, don’t develop the habit of taking birthdays seriously, on account of their own falling during school holidays, but shouldn’t assume it’s that way for everyone. (Not judging grimpixie.
- (Both) Having HBTY sung by a crowd is excruciating.
One other thing. He also said, when he was justifying himself during the show, that the cakes were actually “for everybody.” I’ve always wanted to get a wrap cake and have the bakery write “For Everybody” on it, but the opportunity has yet to arise.
Thanks for all your replies.
I notice the people who like birthdays tend to be on the younger side. For them I say: Just you wait.
I haven’t been a big fan of birthday celebrations since I was, oh, about 13 maybe.
Birthday celebrations to me seem to be all about the people giving the presents and the party and on and on - kinda like a funeral, you know?
I get a year older every year. Someday, I’ll not get any older because I will have expired during that year. Hell, I could get hit by a speeding SUV tomorrow.
Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the fact that I HAVE a birthday each year when it comes around, but I detest birthday celebrations.
I’m turning 31 on Nov. 24. I love birthdays. Mine are great, and other people’s are better still. You get to receive or give presents - both of which are fun - and you get together with your family and have cake and some laughs. It’s perfect.
I like them now, at 31, as much as I did when I was 11. I have absolutely no doubt that I will like them when I’m 61. I honestly don’t understand why anyone WOULDN’T like them, but maybe it’s a family thing.
Oooh, death is coming, oooh. So what? You pansies. Death gets closer EVERY DAY, on your birthday and the 364 unbirthdays a year. If you’re young it’s not worth worrying about and if you’re old you should be smart enough to know it’s not worth worrying about.
I used to really LOVE my birthday. Until my mom died on mine. Now, no matter how hard I try to have fun, there’s always that little black cloud floating around somewhere.
My birthday is in June, just a few days after my sister’s and a few days before Father’s Day. So we celebrate everything on one day and there are presents and food and cakes and lots of laughs, but my mom isn’t there (her birthday was also in June) so there’s just this big empty spot looming over the festivities.
But I still love birthdays (hubby hates 'em).
For me, it’s got nothing to do with death or mortality. I don’t like them. I don’t like parties of any kind, as I’m really uncomfortable in such situations. I don’t like attention being focused on me in that way. I don’t like being in a situation where I feel like I suddenly have to act a certain way and feel a certain way. I don’t want a “celebration of me” - I’m not a huge fan of me and don’t feel that me needs celebrating.
If you like birthdays, knock yourself out and have a ball. You can have mine too if you want it, and then you’ll have two! But what I hate even more than birthdays is people trying to convince me that I need to like them or that there’s something wrong with me for not wanting to have a big party on my birthday. I don’t do anyone a disservice by not wanting to celebrate my birthday - that is, assuming the celebration is, in fact, for me, and not for them.
Lego, that is exactly what I’m trying to say. Especially the part about it being for them and not for me. Here are the posts that got me to start this thread:
Hmmmm, though. I guess this is as much of an inlaw problem as it is a birthday one.
Either I gotta get less fussy, or we need to move far, far away.