One Tuesday last year I got up at and got ready for class in my usual manner. Meaning that I answer my e-mails/surf the web while taking a shit. One of those e-mails is a University bill for $820 dollars, for 3 credits I received for the internship which I had just completed. So I pay that, answer some other stuff, shower, get dressed, and get ready to go. As I'm crunching my Frosted Flakes, I get a phone call. It's my mother, wishing me a happy birthday. And that's how the morning of of my 23rd birthday went. Patton Oswalt was right.
My birthdays have been pretty bleak in the past. I was born on December 22. Somehow, even though everyone is together for the holiday, my birthday gets forgotten in the rush. My 19th was the worst. Everyone literally forgot. My parents, all my siblings, all my brothers-in-law, all my aunts and uncles. The lone person who remembered was my brother in law's mother who is one of those upbeat, perfect, cheery kinds of women who never forget anything. Yes, a woman I have met about 4 times in my life remembered but the woman who pushed me out of her giner couldn't. I spent most of that birthday in the bathroom.
I've never been a huge fan of birthdays (except when I was a <12 kid, and they were fucking awesome). I don't really like being the centre of attention, and I never liked all the pressure to get blackout wasted on my birthday in college. Not that I needed pressure to get blackout wasted in college, but still. On a side note, one time I started changing my birthday on facebook so it happened every day. Got birthday wishes for four days before someone caught on.
Usually in my inner circle of friends, we go out and get plowed on whoever's birthday it is. Last year, I spent my birthday as the TiB Meet-Up where I was given a real "boss" t-shirt. So I guess now my birthdays are spent getting plowed and heckling hipsters at full volume.
That is the best idea anyone's ever had. Focus: My birthday is the 27th of December, so the older I get the less anyone gives a crap. I guess it was a good thing friends were scarce when I was a kid, otherwise I would have been annoyed everytime they left for the holidays. Although these days a lot of my mates are drinking in the taint between Christmas and New Years now, depending on how Scrooge-like their bosses are. The girlfriend has it worse: the 31st of December. She outright hates it, but then, she hates being the center of attention anyway. The kid is also December, but on the 8th, which is much more managable.
My birthday falls on a Saturday this year, so that'll probably mean drinks at home or a mate's on the Friday night and drinks somewhere in the city Saturday night. That's basically a normal weekend anyway, I'll just get some free beers out of it. I'm tossing up between asking the family for a camera (holidaying at the end of the year) or a new tailored suit. I've already got myself anything else I want or need, and they're the only two things I can really think of. I'm also a big fan of money of course, which seems to be the most common gift as you get older. I'm fine with that.
^ This on the money. It took me a long time to figure out what the big deal was about birthdays. I don't know if my parents were super JW's or what but I had to go out in the hall if someone celebrated a birthday in elementary school so I learned to hate them until teachers figured out it wasn't my decision to go out there and damnit I wanted a cupcake too. At any rate I'm not much of a gift kind of guy and I've avoided making a deal out of my birthday but I think this year, I'll be 35 in October, I'll try to get a bunch of people to go out for dinner and drinks because its a good excuse to get together.
My birthday is September 11. Needless to say since 2001, it's been a little tough to celebrate it properly. So typically what I'll do that night is pick a nice restaurant to eat at with my fiancee and friends, and I'll try my damndest to find a member of the armed services dining there and pay for their meal anonymously.
That was pretty much how my 23rd went. Got up, went to work, came home, and spent the rest of the night working in my shop (which I was perfectly fine with). Had my girlfriend been here, we would have probably gone out to a steakhouse (I would say Fogo de Chao) and have lots of sex for dessert. I did have a small barbeque the following weekend with some family/friends but it was pretty laid-back and that's how I wanted it. The past four years my birthday fell on or close to the same weekend as the U of Minnesota's Spring Jam (like homecoming in April) so I spent most of my birthdays in college partying my ass off the entire weekend. Not that I don't enjoy having a good time but I didn't feel like being blacked out and/or high as a kite this year. If anything I just want my birthday to be the day I say "Fuck it I'll do what I want" even if it just means having a quiet evening to myself. I don't think a birthday is an excuse to be a total attention whore, but you should feel a entitled to a little indulgence.
Somewhere in my mid-late 20s my birthdays went from "WOOO PARTY LETS GET FUUUUUUUUUCKED UP!" to "Enjoy a nice meal, a couple quality drinks, and an "extra mile" blow job from my significant other". I am pretty happy with how I've progressed in my maturity.
I have always been a low key birthday type. The family even forgot one year which was fine with me (they clued in a few days later). However, now that my daughter is five, every birthday is reason to go all out. Cakes, cards, presents, hats, candles. She loves it. And I love the fact that she does.
Pretty similar to my M.O. If my birthday is during the week I'll take the day off from work, just because, and then that following weekend I'll go out for some nice drinks and some killer food with a couple of friends and my sister. Pretty low key and mellow, and as I've gotten older I definitely prefer that to a pub crawl and birthday shots. Maybe it'd be different if my birthday was during the summer, but unfortunately it falls right in the middle of January. There's not much to celebrate when it's -20* out.
I have friends that just like to plan shit. They overdo it. One night is the birthday dinner where you invite a bunch of people out to dinner, then have them split the cost of your meal. My friends do this, I don't, I think its shitty, unless the most you're spending on a meal is $15. So they get all these plans, hype it all up, and occasionally goes well. I don't care what happens on my birthday, if it ends with sex or just a new girl in the mix I consider it a success. Otherwise, it was just okay. My 26th birthady was pretty solid, had one bar night, dancing night, followed by a house party night. Yes, I take multiple days for my birthday. I enjoy my birthday more that way. I wasn't supposed to be born according to about 4 doctors without serious health complications due to my mom being 40 and what not. My mom was pregnant with another child before me that did not make it. Then my mom got pregnant again due to "your father kept rolling over in his sleep and I was too tired to get up" with me. I was worse off, they were giving her bad news left and right, my mom was stubborn and went to get a 5th opinion. That doctor said something along the lines off "He'll need some water to clear the dust out his lungs, but other than that he'll be fine." So fuck you, I'm taking a week to enjoy my birthday.
I'm turning 25 this year and I'm at the point where I just want to spend my birthday with my guy, have dinner in the city (Philly) and go out for some drinks afterwards. He's always made a big deal out of my birthday (partially because I would announce it as my "birthday weekend"), but I don't want it to be like that anymore. Seems a little silly since we are getting married and to me a wedding is more significant than a birthday. Although, I'm my mom's only girl and she'll always still think of me as being 5 so I'm sure she will still be throwing me birthday parties in her nursing home 30 years from now...
My 26th birthday is on Saturday. I'm just going home to visit with my mom and my step-dad. We're going to go out to dinner at our favorite local place and then come home, have some drinks and watch a movie maybe. Nothing too fancy. Honestly it's my ideal way to spend my birthday.
Can I just throw this out there? OFFICE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS We have a problem at my office with birthday cubical desecration and it's totally out of control. In fact, I looked for a photo comparable to the level of insanity that goes on at my work and couldn't find one that even came close. Think streamers, signs, confetti, blow up walkers, balloons galore - you want it, we got it here folks. It's not just the 'milestone' b-days either - it's every fuckin' one, for every fuckin person. And it's all at the hands of our self appointed birthday ambassador who isn't doing it because they give a flying fuck about you - they're doing it because it gets them attention. We have a large department so it goes on at least once a month. Add to this, that the poor person having the birthday has to clean up their cubical so they can work. Happy Birthday! Now please spend the next forty five minutes taking down and packing all this shit up so it can be inflicted on the next person - Erm ... no. I have a few close friends at work and we'll maybe do lunch or something for each others' birthdays. Having some happy happy cheer squad tit nobody likes decorate peoples' cubicles like they just turned 19 every fuckin year just shouldn't be allowed. Jesus, I forgot my own birthday last year but was reminded when I came in to work on Monday. Thankfully, after year #3 of this horseshit most of the decorations went "missing" one day. Unfortunately happy cheer squad tit replaced them "out of her pocket" (and then expensed it as a company incurred cost).
For my birthday, I get to go to a restaurant that my parents pick up the check for. Then I go out with whoever wants to come watch me drunkenly announce it's my birthday to everyone in the bar. My birthday is the one day of the year that I let myself get too drunk because I always end up drinking enough to demand strangers buy me a drink.
If I was the learning type, I could probably learn something about myself from my birthdays over the years. From 17-21 it was an excuse to get massively, crowd-surfing-on-the-party-bus level drunk. When I was 22 and 23, it was an excuse for ridiculous benders that lasted for days. Then, I was pretty depressed for my 24th and 25th birthdays, did absolutely nothing and felt sorry for myself. I kept my 25th so quiet that no-one noticed, and spent it playing computer games on adderall. Baller. Some of the depression was legit, some of it was nonsensical bullshit, but I've been happier since then. Now, I make it a point to do something for my birthday; partly as a reminder that things are objectively better now than they were, and partly as a reminder to enjoy the awesome things in my life and not be a whiny bitch. The 'catch' is that my birthday is sandwiched between a couple of awesome events which always get entirely out of hand. If I arc up for my birthday, I am usually shattered for these events (oh brain, why can't you synthesize seratonin faster?). So, these days I usually spend my birthday drinking cocktails in my pool, alternating between pool volleyball and lazing around on air mattresses blazing shisha. It's a low key good time, no-one has to spend bulk coin immediately before Christmas, and everyone wins. Side note: when I was younger, I decided that any birthday that didn't involve sex was a failure. Combine this with the massive consumption of everything under the rainbow, and I made some extremely questionable decisions. The most notable of these was going home with a girl on my 21st who, after her brother had entered the room and casually chatted to us for 10 minutes while we were both naked, told me that she didn't give head because it reminded her of her Uncle molesting her. I excused myself and fled her house. The unfortunate part was that she lived 2 houses down from me and was a friend of friend. It was not the cleanest of getaways.
I'm 23 and need absolutely no reason other than "it's a Tuesday and we have nothing to do tomorrow except work/school" to get fucked up. Because of this, I usually end up going out and tying one on with some friends. I prefer people other than my close friends not know it's my birthday. This way I don't have to hear about something all day that I don't really give a shit about.
I turn 21 in a month, and this is exactly what I plan to do. Hurrah for maturity! Although to be fair, it's on a saturday, and during the opening weekend of fall semester. I doubt my friends will give me much of a choice in the matter. Other than making sure I spend time with friends or family, my birthdays aren't really much of an event. I like it that way.