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A Birthday Is Like A New Year Look, let me just say at the outset that I don’t want to get too touchy-feely on you all here. The last thing I want to do is get caught up in some maelstrom of emotion, especially if it is coming from you, the reader. At least this computer acts as a buffer between us. I did want to talk about birthdays, and the realisation I came to on my birthday this year. I turned 24 on the 2/4/2004. Pretty awesome, hey? Fine, let’s move on. For the most part, I spent my birthday alone. The cat was here, but she had decided that the day would be broken up into distinct portions of time, dedicated to either (a) sleeping or (b) annoying the living fuck out of me through a systematic campaign of electric cord-grabbing, drawn out meowing and shitting in the house. Happy birthday. Sorry I didn’t get you a card. I think my first error was deciding to place a moratorium on masturbation for the course fo the day. It may seem like a rookie mistake in retrospect, but my opinion was that nothing could be sadder than tagging on the anniversary of one’s birth. A weird policy, but I was determined to stick with it. Besides, the cat was hanging around the house, as I said. That would have felt weird and vaguely illegal. The first item on my agenda was a viewing of Matrix Revolutions on DVD. Hip hip hooray. It was alright, but it really wasn’t up to scratch for a birthday movie. When that was finished, and I had consumed my morning V, I wandered around the house for a little while, to see what was going on in each room. Answer: nothing. I even went down to the back room, which is separate from the house and full of all my roleplaying crap. Dungeons & Dragons and so on. It’s a small room, and crowded, so I decided to tidy up in there a bit, and move stuff around. Of course, as always happens when I have seized by an inexplicable urge to clean, I got halfway through this process and lost interest. So there I was with books, chairs and other assorted crap all over the place, and an overwhelming sense of apathy. I sat down in the comfy GM chair and put my head on the cold whiteboard that we use as a table and miniatures battlefield. Sitting there alone, on my birthday, surrounded by the detritus of gaming paraphernalia, I felt more like a friendless nerd than I ever had before. What was I going to do? I decided to write some self-indulgent prose (not this; some other wank). I tore a page out of a nearby exercise book, and took a black felt tip from my pocket. I wrote the date and time at the top, and began to write. I’m not going to reprint it here. It’s embarrassing crap about having goals and stuff...the sort of crap that you write or think when you feel sorry for yourself. I’m blushing just thinking about it. Anyway, I’ll try to get back to my point (and I do have one). In the course of my scrawling, I hit upon a slogan. The sort of thing that a self-help guru could write a book about. My attention span is limited to 30 minutes, so at best I can draw 1000 words or so from these nuggets of afflatus. A Birthday Is A Personal New Year. Look at it there. Shining in its pithy, enlightening glory. Imagine it adorning a glossy paperback. The cover could have a photo of a lantern-jawed guy with a winning smile wearing a party hat. He could even be blowing one of those tooters. The full title would be something like this - A Birthday Is A Personal New Year: A Mantra Against Middle Age. It would be full of example conversations, like this: FRIEND: “Another birthday, ay? You’re getting
on, aren’t you?”. January 1st is only a new year for my uncle. He was born on December 31st. I wasn’t around in January 1980. THIS is my new year. This epiphany didn’t help my sour mood too much, unfortunately. I realised why later that night, after I forced myself to finish cleaning the room, and did some clothes washing. I ended up hosting one of those awesome parties where evryone gets really drunk and stays until late. My parents got me a fussball table, which was and is brilliant. I feel just like one of those cocks from Friends. So yeah, anyway, my guests were drinking, fussballing and laughing. Some guy dropped his pants. Even the cat was chillaxing. With a start, I realised that my surly mood had gone. In fact, I was feeling quite euphoric and energetic, and wondered why. I glanced at the clock – 10:15pm. The time I was born! My new year had truly begun. The sourness of the day was due to my brain and body shucking off the carcass of the old, filthy, unwashed year that had been. A brand new vista appeared before me. A blank canvas upon which to smear my body secretions and plans for the future. A brave new world that had such people in it. Trees in Autumn beauty, dry woodland paths....opportunity knocking twice like a postman, doors opening and closing, looking before leaping, exercise, fruit, animal lust, maybe a fussball league.... That was three days ago. Since then it has pissed down every day. Stupid new year. I’m going back to bed. |
