Ketchup/Catch-Up

Hello, all you darlings. Let’s catch up.

Your grouchy old Auntie has had a birthday since my last post.

Yes, that makes me your grouchy slightly-older Auntie. I’ve addressed this smart-mouth tendency of yours before. Don’t make me go over there.

Where was I? Right, gotcha.

Birthdays are strange things. They’re universal, like toilet paper. Unlike toilet paper, however, there’s a cultural inclination to make them seem important.

That works for the first dozen. Thirteen, if you’re going to be Bar or Bat Mitzvah’ed. Sixteen if you plan on having a life. Twenty-one if you want to be legal about it. Thirty if you aggrandize your neurosis. Forty, ditto.

By fifty, birthdays lose their significance as (please insert appropriate sound effect, then tell your therapist what you chose) a Special Event.

Past that, birthdays become much, much more valuable than an Event.

They become an Excuse.

Like the trope commercial says, that’s priceless.

I mostly spent mine not doing things I don’t like to do. Bliss! Oh, and I ate many sugary baked goods. Also fun. And then it was over.

No harm, no foul, no hangover and no lingering effects. Birthdays are like New Year’s Day.

If you think about it, January 2nd doesn’t feel any different than December 30th.

Spoiler alert for my young friends: 52 doesn’t feel any different than 51 ½.