Today's Your Birthday

Happy Birthday, Debby Robertson! There, I said it. And I mean it too, but thanks to the birthday feature on Facebook, these days every "Happy Birthday" wish is now hollow. You don't even have to write the words yourself anymore, you just click where it says "wish so-and-so a Happy Birthday." I've stopped doing it; it's my own little rebellion against the abhorrent practice of getting credit for doing nothing at all. (Recently a friend of mine got 157 "happy birthdays" on Facebook, but mine wasn't one of them. Did he care?)

What does that mean anyway? Why wish a friend just one day a year to be happy? And why that particular day, as if the fact that you were born was your doing or resulted in anything worthy of celebration by every damn person who knows you, unless you have found a cure for cancer, ended homelessness, saved our forests, closed the hole in the ozone or figured out how to feed the world? What if you are some ordinary shlub who has done nothing of value to anyone, or worse, hurt people? Should you still be wished a happy birthday?

Every country has its own birthday customs. The oddest one occurs in Great Britain, where the Royal Family sends greeting cards to those celebrating their 100th and 105th birthday, and every year thereafter. How cheap can you get?

Debby's always ready for a party!

In China, we're all a year older, since they count age without a zero. A newborn's age is one, a 12-month-old is two, and so on.

My mother always said the same thing on my birthday, how it was really a day to celebrate her since she was the one who went through the pain of childbirth. Supposedly she was in the movies when she went into labor and was sorry she had to miss the ending. That might explain things.