It always surprises me just how weird people get when I comment that I think celebrating my birthday is silly. I don't mind if other people do, of course, but I can't get into it. I have considered whether it could be related to my mortal fear of aging, and though I do frequently make jokes along the lines of "Oh, yay, I'm one year farther into my metabolism slowing down!" I don't really think that's it. I think it's just mostly that celebrating me for coming into the world, something with which I had very little to do, and buying me material things is just... silly. But still, people tend to think I'm the one that's silly.
So, to silence those yowling annoyances, here's how I will celebrate. I will ask for exactly the kind of celebration of myself that I want. For my birthday, I want compliments.
Last summer we were having a card game night at my house. For some reason the subject of birthdays came up, and I was going on my typical I-don't-like-celebrating-my-birthday spiel like the one I wrote above. I said I also didn't like the ritual of buying people junk; I hate stuff! Why couldn't I, I mused aloud and loudly to my guests, instead ask for something meaningful to me-- why, like compliments! Compliments are the perfect gift-- they make me feel happy and loved, they don't cost you a thing, and they don't sit in the corner collecting dust. My next birthday, I declared, I would ask people to give me compliments as gifts. Apparently I very much offended a guest present that evening (though I'm fairly certain everything I do offends this person in some way) because to their sensibilities it was significantly ruder to ask for compliments than material things, but to me it's the other way around. Asking someone to spend time and money on you is to my mind much more demanding, and simultaneously much less meaningful.
So I'm doing it. Tomorrow I turn the ripe old age of twenty-three, and in celebration of this event, I want everyone who is feels so inclined to write down three compliments that they genuinely have for me. Your love is worth so much more to me than any other kind of gift, so expressions thereof are what I am seeking. Yeah, perhaps soliciting compliments is tacky. If you think I'm being a self-centered juvenile jerk in throwing this out there, well, sure I am-- I'm celebrating my birthday! ;-) In that case, feel free to not comply.
Happy birthday to me. :-)
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