Everyone’s having a birthday at the moment, selfishly. Either that or getting married. I seem to be making lots of trips to card shops (typically unable to get a pile of cards and stamps in one go and distribute them daily to the post box by my building) and lots of present buying. Then there’s weddings… I’m going to only make friends on the basis on when their birthday is from now on. You don’t need more than twelve friends, nobody does. Have one friend with a birthday in each month, preferably about the same point in each month, so that your card and present buying (plus often the whole thing of going out for a meal or a night on the town) can be done pretty much once every four weeks.
At the moment it’s crazy. If I had a 9-5 job, I couldn’t do it. Every waking moment is buying cards and licking envelopes.
If then I found I was attracted to someone and perhaps thought they might become my girlfriend at some point (or the subject of an advanced stalking campaign) I’d have to find out when their birthday was, then cancel the friendship of whoever it was whose birthday was in that month. Otherwise you’re talking a double birthday, card and present buying, going for a meal month.
If that relationship didn’t work out, or you got a restraining order from the Police, then you’d have to try and get your cancelled friend back to get the whole system regular again. Also, if you have a batch of people who’s birthday it is in October, well, some of them will have to be culled or move their birthday to a different month. Call me authoritarian but…
Same as weddings. Tell them that you’ve got your February, or whenever, wedding booked and they’ll have to move their special day to March or whatever month is free. They will argue that it’s “their� special day, but you should rebuff their preposterous argument with a dismissive wave or your envelope-cut hand.
I’m the typical birthday curmudgeon. That whole “well done for not dying in the last twelve months, that is worth a present� sort of person. I think you should celebrate decades. Have a decadeday, I generally take myself off somewhere on my birthday (this year went to see Morrissey alone in Halifax, year before that flew 4,000 miles alone to America) and it’s not a stand or anything, I really don’t like the fuss. Not that I’m presuming anyone would make a fuss. Maybe it’s the fear of the lack of fuss that makes me bugger off?
Others have the same attitude. For example, I send A her birthday card today but she herself says it’s only her 29th and so not really a landmark. Good for her. That’s sense.
T-A was celebrating her third decadeday today and so that was worth a present. She is an executive and so I got her a file-o-fax. These have come back into fashion since their 80’s heyday and I might even get one myself. It would be an ideal thing for me to loose and get annoyed about. Met T-A in Room and toasted her thirty years of life with a cocktail. I think thirty is something of a landmark, and although it’s only a day like any other, I’m conscious that I will hit this age in seven months. It’s one of the reasons I’m driven to get GH working. I want to sit there on my 30th and not have to say “I’m a comic, same as I was when I was 23.� I want to be able to say “I have a company.� I think that’s an okay way to enter your thirties. And they say your 30’s are the new 20’s….
People in their 30’s say that.
Time flies though… I’m not young anymore. Look at my parents! They had two children by the time they were 30! By brother, and an older, round headed freak-boy. I really need to have done something similarly mature by the time I reach this scary landmark. And what could be more mature than setting up a website called Global Hangover? That is the new mature.
- Post to:
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
Nowpublic
Reddit
« Previous | Home | Next »