You Say It’s Your Birthday
My birthday is this week. I love my birthday. It’s a very weird day for me, though. Most of the time, I absolutely hate being the center of attention. I have gotten better at it, when there is an obvious reason for it (I’m presenting research, performing, or speaking about a topic I know a lot about), but I am not someone who just generally wants attention. But on my birthday, I do. I blame the fact that I didn’t get a lot of attention on my birthday when I was growing up. It’s during the summer, so I didn’t get the in-school-cupcakes thing that my friends did. I also had a hard time having birthday parties with more than two people, since everyone was out of town. And my dad’s job had a big event that was always around my birthday, so there were many years where the only family with me was my mom. Now I’m old enough to verbalize that I want attention, instead of just moping around and pretending like it’s fine (I spent a lot of my childhood and adolescence moping. I think that’s fairly standard, though). So even though I’m technically an adult, I still like to throw myself birthday parties and have cake and get presents.
This year, my friends and are I going on a minibreak for a combination birthday/going away party. We’re heading to the Big City for a weekend of adventure. Planned adventures include: staying in a two-bedroom suite with full kitchen, games of Killer Bunnies and Apples to Apples (the best two party games in existence), yarn shopping (these are the friends from my knitting group, after all), a trip to a fancy grocery followed by homemade gourmet meals in the hotel, an improv comedy show, an underground swing/jazz club with a live swing band (I’m so excited about this, I can’t even put it into words), imported beer, and a fancy import store. I’m definitely looking forward to the trip, but every time I think about it, I’m struck by how lucky I am to have a group of friends who will take off work and take a weekend vacation with me, just because I asked them to. Most of them have jobs that require working weekends, so it’s not as easy to just take off Friday through Sunday. I try not to get all sentimental, because they would just laugh at me, but I really do feel lucky.
