Another Birthday

~ Gottfried

I hate birthdays. I don’t like the entire process of sneaky people coming and wishing. That one day you think you’re special and everyone loves you. But the next day everyone starts acting a fool around you. Some don’t even wait for it to be midnight before activating their folly. Birthdays are paradoxical, they are meant to make you happy but they end up making you old and sad. Unless you’re already old and sad, then it’s another day at the office.

Smile, you should be happy today. I can picture in my mind a world without birthdays, a world without hate. Simply because I truly hate birthdays. Ever thought about birthday depression? It’s terrible. If you want to make me feel special, do it every day. Why is everyone excited about me being one step closer to being dead? There’s no point. Let me pop your bubble, I’m not special and neither are you.

Birthdays are arbitrary markers of time constructed to impose meaning on our finite existence in an indifferent universe, perpetuated by capitalism to fuel the consumption of sugary foods and mass-produced kitsch. When it’s your birthday and you see some waiters coming towards you singing an annoying birthday song with a cake. And you think to yourself, should I kill myself or kill them. Why do people take a whole month to celebrate their birthdays? It’s called a birthDAY. That’s one DAY. Cut that shit out.

Best wishes on your birthday. My so-called Happy Birthday is being made a very Unhappy Birthday by inundating it with fake and reasonless love.  I any day prefer the hate. Neither the best wishes of my well-wishers will make my birthday better nor the curses of my haters make it worse. Birthdays were so easy when I was younger like I wanted toys and stuff like that. But now? people are like “What do you want?” and I’m just like “I don’t know, maybe some good fortune? Emotional stability? A love life?”

If you think about it, birthdays are really satanic rituals about chanting around a flaming object that represents the number of years taken off your life, upon which the flames are blown out and a knife is stabbed through it. I hate those dumb questions that follow too. “When are you getting married?” The way I see it, it’s actually none of your damn business. Now if you want a cheerful response, write me a cheque of a million dollars and I’ll even let you pick the date. In fact, I’ll do you one better and you get to pick the wife too.

The ‘happy birthday song’ is the most cringe-worthy song ever written. And when people are singing it to you, nobody tells you what you’re supposed to do with your face. Should I smile? Too much? Now I look like the donkey from Shrek. Once again it’s your birthday and you are left to reflect on your simple existence full of endless failure and bad decisions. To add to an already depressing day, my Facebook wall will be filled with birthday messages from people I’ve never met, haven’t seen in years, or genuinely couldn’t give a toss about.

Why do men hate celebrating their birthdays so much? We’re tired of receiving socks from people who expect boat cruises from us. Explain this, on my birthday I spend money to celebrate with you. On your birthday, I spend money on gifts for you. Then there’s valentine, women’s day, mother’s day, girlfriends day, and some invented day only women celebrate. I feel sick that men still somehow spend money on Jesus’ birthday too. Make it stop. Well, to everyone else, today is Gottfried’s birthday.

For me, it’s just another Monday.

© Gottfried. All rights reserved

574 thoughts on “Another Birthday”

  5. SO, instead of wishing you Happy Birthday, I will respect your wishes, and simply make it just another day… EXCEPT! I will give you an off-color joke that may be more lasting than even Larry Leprise’s death. You know him, right? The author of the Hokey Pokey. I mean, he led a full life they say. So, the mortician did their gig After his passing, taking care of Requisite pre-casket requirements. They then rolled up the coffin. They put his left leg in… oh BOYYYYYY, that’s when the trouble started!

    So, THAT’s not off color, but this is, and maybe you’ll enjoy it. If not, well, there you go. It’ll be just another day in the life.

    So, God comes to a focused sense of clarity in all His/Her God/Shakhina omniscience and omnipresence and prescient remembrance (Yeah, I stole that title from my open poetry collection with a vampire protagonist). Comes to a focused moment, and… My I~Thou needs a Me-Damn vacation! I want to go to ONE place in ONE time and have a vacation. WhatEVER do I do?!! Oh yeah! Lucy. I’ll ask Lucy! I cast his light down on the earth. Maybe HE’ll have a suggestion for my vacation.

    So, in this focus of place where direction and place is singular and not everywhere, the omniscient Dude~Dudette descends to Hell. “Hey Lucy!!! WhatUP, Man?!! Word!” Grimacing, “Wow. Unannounced? My schedule’s pretty full.” Coming back, “I respect that. The world os a big, oh that’s so new, the world is a big place. May I ask just 1 question?” Lucy comes back, “Well, ok for you, ok.”

    God takes a deep breath, say his ineffable name and exhales. Surprisingly, NEITHER of those things erases anything. Go figure. So, God ramps up with another big breath and, “Ok, I’ll just say it! I need a vacation! Not long. Just need one. I cast you upon the earth. You have experience there. Any suggestions?”

    “All right, I’ll play. But, none of that Old Testament, psychotic shit, ok?”
    “Sure. Good enough. Done.”
    “What about Pluto? It’s so cold, you will certainly have the slopes to yourself. What about that?”
    “No no no no. I hate cold. Tat’s why I put it so far out THERE.”
    “Ok. Venus? Noxious, psychedelic gas and you’ll come out with a real tan before you know it.”
    “No, I’m better when not altered, and you take care of integrating the darkness. So, thanks, but no thanks.”
    “You-Damn you are being difficult! Ok, what about your mainstay, your old stomping grounds, the Earth?”
    “OHHHHHHHH Nooooooo waaaayyyyyy. You know?!! The LAST time on the Earth was 2,000 Me-Damn years ago. Geez. My calendar was all messed up and not synced. I thought it was Spring Break. I knock up some Jewish chic, and they are STILL talking about it!”

    🙂 Happy Birthday. Toss the above or place it on whatever day that ends in ‘y’ you want, Man!!

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      1. 🙂 Yeah, I guess when absolutely everything is on your calendar… mistakes happen. I mean, look at the duckbill platypus. Was the Creation App left running in a dream where a duck, a beaver, and a venomous snake walked into a bar, and only one was allowed to leave?

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  6. I won’t say Happy Birthday because I suppose I am way late and also because one time I told this fellow from the internet Happy Birthday and he got all angry about it like I had told him to kiss a dog or something so I never tell online people Happy Birthday because you just don’t know who is really behind the screen and I don’t like getting yelled at so anyway… I don’t hate birthdays, but I don’t celebrate them, especially now that I am a 65 year old granny. Birthdays are one day close to being an 83 year old granny and I have decided that I am going to kick the bucket at 83 so I am not going to celebrate the fact that I am getting closer to that age every year that goes by.

    Also, you have enemies? You don’t strike me as the sort who would have enemies, but then again, all I know about you is that you are a good writer. You could be in the mafia or part of a terrorist group or something. Ya just never know here in the twilight zone. 😮😨

    Good post Mr. Gottfried

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