kethrai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Birthday Entry I have a lot of truly legitimate reasons for hating my birthday. And not a one of them has a thing to do with being one year older. As long as I can remember, I’ve always rather liked my birthday. It’s kind of neat to be a year older. It’s especially neat when you’re a horrendous overachiever when you’re young...getting older meant that I could tell someone I had been a storyteller for 5 years and they didn’t look at me with that “liar-liar” look in their eyes. Getting older lent me the temporal authority to claim my own achievements, for once. I have no particular problem with getting older. Even the things that I could blame on age—the crappy knees, the incipient carpal—aren’t really legitimately products of aging. My knees got wrecked at 15 and 16—my hands and wrists in my mid-twenties. Because they are not actually signs of age, I don’t despise them as the products of age. Even having a December birthday actually isn’t all that terrible—because my mother also had a December birthday, she was fairly careful to quash the notion of “combined” Christmas and birthday presents early on in the game. So I don’t have the usual traumas associated with having a December or January birthday, which usually means that folks get their birthdays blown off altogether. My seventeenth birthday was really good. I had a big party (unusual for the sort of geeky girl that I was) and some of the Cool Guys came, and one of them even gave me a teddy bear with an AK-47 miniature tucked in its neck ribbons. It was probably the pinnacle of birthdays—lots of fun, a legit reason to be the center of attention, and cool presents. I should have known from the signs of my eighteenth birthday, however, that my adult birthdays were just gonna be no damn good. My eighteenth birthday I had to ride the bus home in freezing drizzle. The bus stop was a mile and a half from my house. And my mom forgot to drive down and pick me up. It sorta went downhill from there. Birthdays during college were shared mostly with the evil ex--'nuff said. One birthday in my mid-twenties starred the clutch falling out of the bottom of my car a hundred miles from home. Another birthday week involved my car being totalled in an accident, moving all week, and not even having my kitty with me, because he was staying with my sister while I was moving. One involved a near-nervous breakdown, quitting my job and getting a new one within two days of my birthday. It's not that I particularly hate my birthday--I hate that it's the moment in time that Lady Fate chooses to punt me in the ass. As a matter of preventative thinking, I've taken my last few birthdays off from work. The car can't break down on my birthday if I don't drive it--I can't be hit by the falling piano if I don't leave the house. I was considering spending today under the bed in a flak jacket, and then realized we sleep on a futon. Because, after all, I've hit the Age of Alexander, finally--the opportunity for Lady Fate to show her rather unique sense of humor was pretty ripe. It was okay. Some of the usual nuisances occurred-- we had a cash flow problem this week, so any elaborate birthday plans went out the window. I had to renew my driver's license--surprisingly, the picture was not as repulsive as usual. I had to work, and five of my coworkers cornered me to sing "Happy Birthday", but as it was NOT the "Viking Death Stomp", which my sister and about thirty of her friends regaled me with when I turned 30, it was livable. We did find, despite the cash situation, we could scrounge up the dough to go out to dinner at the Indian restaurant. Which is always a divine, if somewhat bloating, treat. Apparently I'm getting smarter, too, because I remembered to wear a stretchy dress, and not something with a belt. My folks sent me a funny birthday card, and my Secret Pal from ThreeWayAction sent me a gorgeous e-card. The darling folks at the Indian restaurant (who adore us--not only do we eat there whenever we can, we tip big) brought out my gulab jumin with a candle in it. It was cute. I'm not sure if a birthday candle in fried cheese balls in rose syrup is quite like anything I've ever had before as a birthday celebration, but hey. No piano. Perhaps this is a sign. Maybe the birthdays will calm down a little, as I calm down a little. But driving around, going out, doing stuff, and so forth--this year, I think it was awfully risky. I may not buy the flak jacket for next year, but on December 11, 2003, (if I have to make sure the bed frame has legs for the occasion) I'm not going to take the chance. Cause it would be just like her to wait until I'm thirty-four to make things really suck. 7:29 p.m. - 2002-12-11 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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