Birthdays suck. It’s a constant reminder that life is moving along and that time is not your friend. Neither is gravity. Who are your friends when it comes to birthdays? Do people who send you a card once a year and see you every other year considered your friends even though they know the name of your dog, spouse, mother, and father? Finally, do you consider family members your friends?
Firstly, family members are in a different category, particularly in laws. They are sort of quasi-friends and quasi-family, but lets be honest, most of us truly think they are synonymous with outlaws. They aren’t really family, hence “in law,” as in family only by a legal technicality. Anything by legal technicality means that it’s by default and is barely acceptable except for some brilliant genealogist who decided that by marriage everyone should be related. Go figure. Bad enough you have legal and social commitments to one person, by marriage you are obligated to the whole clan! Don’t forget the clan’s kids and their in laws as they are legally family as well. If you’re fortunate enough to have in laws that are similar to you in age, background, interests, and taste in alcohol, you’re on your way to being quasi-friends.
People who know you at the office are what I consider acquaintances, merely because they may know “of you” as in your coffee habit, your work dalliances, and your incessant need for the brown spot on your nose, but they do not know how you retaliate after work. That’s what makes you the uniquely interesting person that you constantly strive to be. That’s what makes you brilliantly different from the passive aggressive assholes that surrounds you every day. Additionally, do your work mates really know what your favorite beverage is? Do they know how many anonymous partners you’ve been with in the last 6 months? Do they know that when you come home from work you fantasize about bringing an AK 47 to work the next day and blowing them all away? Do they know that you drink to keep them at bay? Do they know that after you puke your head out, you curl up into the fetal position with your pinchy rabbit and suck your thumb until sleep inundates you? Unless they know a little bit about your provocative, vulgar inner you, they are not your friends.
Finally, what about people that send you postcards once or twice a year but you can barely remember their faces? Do they count as friends? (Insert eye rolling, heavy sigh here) Lets be brutally, insensitively honest, these people are anal retentive and they have installed your information into their calendar because of one of the three following reasons. First, they’ve reached a pinnacle in their life, meaning they have faced some sort of life/death moment and are reaching out so that when their time come, they will have people at their funeral. Secondly, they have created an interest in you where there’s a false, or true, belief that you might be of value to them down the line. We’ve all seen Hotel Rwanda so we know what brownie points are all about. Alternatively, they truly value your friendship and want to stay in touch. Thirdly, they are curious, nosy sons of bitches that are only interested in hearing about your pitfalls and eventual demise. By staying in touch with you they are on top of the inevitable downward spiral that they hope your superficially glorious life will take. (Nodding) Yes, I think we all have “friends” like this. Some of them fall under the family category too.
So if it’s your birthday, go celebrate by yourself and hope that everyone forgets. Who wants to be reminded that you’re a year older and one step closer to collecting social security, or that you need to stop procrastinating and pick your head stone already. On the other hand, if you have true friends they’d take you out and not mention the “B” word and buy you just enough drinks until you think you are the hottest thing at the bar. At least when they hold your head over the porcelain God you know that you are with true friends, not some asshole who reminds you five days a week that you need to find another job.
Happy Birthday!!!
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