Miasmatic Review

It's just how I am.

Some of you may have noticed various posts wishing me a Happy Birthday a couple of days back, and my caustic comments to it. My Birthday is something I try to keep quiet, but we all know how it goes… Telephone, television, Tell-a-blogger. One person finds something out and then it spreads across the internet like an STD at a Caribbean orgy.

I don’t celebrate my birthday. If someone gives me a gift, I tend to politely decline it and advise I don’t celebrate my birthday. Crude comments and gestures were made to people that did wish me a happy birthday, especially friends that should know better. For years I’ve hated my birthday, for the days leading up to it my stomach churns with dark bile of despair knowing that someone is going to try to do something. Then when the day comes, it generally is one of the worst days of the year. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. It’s like a bad day from hell, every year. I can count on it and it will happen.

People have told me it was my attitude, that I create this day of hell. Thinking maybe they where correct, I tried changing my attitude to see what happens. That failed miserably, that was one of the worse Birthday’s I’ve had in years.

Before any of you old folks out there start trying to make this a denial of age thing, it’s not. The last time I celebrated my birthday was when I was 21, and only because I wanted to go out and get drunk… legally. Even before then I didn’t celebrate my 20th B-day.

I used to look forward to my birthday, the fun and special treatment for the day. Then one year, when I turned 18, everyone forgot. EVERYONE, not one “Happy Birthday”, not a card, gift or anything. It took two weeks before anyone ever realized what happened, and that was my mother. Through all the excuses and apologies, she said it wouldn’t happen again. Flash forward one year, I’m a freshman in college. I’m turning 19; my birthday comes and goes with the same lack of recognition. I was sure people would remember this year, because they forgot the year before. Nope. This time however, it only took about a week before someone remembered; this time it was my sister.

On both days I had various things happen that were just miserable. The kind of things that in the grand scheme of life aren’t horrible, but are enough to ruin a day. Some of my favorite examples are: Plumbing explosion, being assigned menial tasks at work, car breaking down in the middle of nowhere w/no phone, etc.

Since then I decided that I was not going to recognize or celebrate my birthday. It makes life easy on my wife because she doesn’t have to worry about shopping or buying me anything. She doesn’t have to plan anything or do something special. We just go about our day as if it’s any other day.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go finish sending some “Frag off” e-mails.