My Birthday Blog

My Birthday is one week from today, I will be 26 years old. 312 months. 9496.5 Days (leap days add that fraction). 227,916 hours. 13,674,960 minutes. 820,497,600 seconds. Why is that 820 million seconds seems much longer than 9496 days? Perhaps my math is wrong but I doubt it.

If you don't want to read the history of me skipping my birthday skip down to the last paragraph starting with OK: New Plan.

Those who know me know I've long avoided birthday parties and celebrations of this type. I've often been asked, "Why didn't you tell us it's your birthday?" a ew weeks after the date. Its harder than you think to avoid birthdays for a number of years.

It was easy in elementary school to skip it. It was a summer birthday and easily overlooked. I did have to suffer through a "family party." The only upside is that I got a cake in the shape of R2D2 one time. Why do we stop having fun cakes? It doesn't matter, I couldn't eat cake on my diet now anyway.

In Junior High the teacher always made a big deal in home room about your birthday. I thought I was golden because of the summer month thing. But then she sprung the 1/2 birthday thing on a girl born June 1st on December 1st because she had cried when she realized she'd be skipped. I was going to be on the hook but as it turns out June 28th's 1/2 birthday falls over Christmas Break, crisis averted. The teacher forgot and I didn't bring it up.

In high school I tried just keeping the date a secret. Unfortunately this backfired horribly as people just had to figure it out and plan something annoying for the boy who was hiding his birthday. I had to remove the mystery from the event to keep people from planning these type of things.

If you met me at Harding you probably never knew when my birthday was. I'd always respond when asked when it is by saying, "oh it was a couple months ago". That way people felt guilty about missing it and dropped the subject. Or say that "why didn't you tell me?" line. If pressed I'd act hurt and say, "it's really no big deal that you missed it."

If you knew me at ACU I developed a new lie about my birthday. When asked I'd say, "Well, it's September 11th." They'd say "Oh really." And I'd just shrug and say, "Well, you know." This was good, no rational person plans a party for September 11th. I occasionally felt guilty but who am I harming. It was the perfect lie, there was no mystery to stir people interest and no hope a large party.

Well this year all my best laid lies have been shattered by the Saturn Road Bulletin. On the first Sunday of June they printed a Birthday calendar. And lo and behold, there I was sitting correctly on Tuesday, June 28th. What's a boy to do? I guess it's time I gave up hiding it. Like I said, I can't eat an R2D2 cake (even if it's sugar-free its too high in carbs).

Part of the reason I don't like birthdays is I feel guilty accepting gifts. But someone recently said to me that it is unchristian to not accept charity and gifts. We are called to give to those in need and its a cultural thing to honor someone on their birthday. And so if I turn these things down its removing from the giver a chance to give. I still don't really buy that and I'm not technically in need. Although... I do need an ipod. So...

OK: New plan - Best Buy Gift Certificates. An iPod is too expensive to be given as a gift to me. I'd feel horribly guilty. But if I just got a handful of 5, 10 or 20 dollar gift certificates it would be a manageable level of guilt and I could get an ipod and be as cool as Samantha Bingham.