This year, I only made one New Year's resolution: not to mention in this column the fact that it was my birthday last Wednesday. But, seeing as how, with that sentence, I just threw that whole resolution down the crapper, I might as well tell you, yes, it was my birthday last week. And you didn't even send me a card.

I realize that my birthday is really nothing to shout about; I obviously don't deserve to have my picture painted up there on the Smart Card HQ window with Washington and MLK (although I am launching a campaign to get it up there next year.) But, having been raised an only child (unless you count my cats, which I think my mother does), I have grown to believe that my birthday is of roughly the same importance as Charles' and Diana's wedding, or at least the Golden Globe awards, despite the fact that, as far as I know, my birthday has never been televised. Yet.

It's not really the presents so much that I enjoy (although believe me, it's never too late to send gifts!) as the tradition of the whole thing. For example, the first thing I do when I wake up on my birthday is play the Beatles' "Birthday" at full volume while doing a funny little dance, sort of a butt-wiggle-slash-arm-flail, in my pajamas. Apparently, this is not something that is done in every home; of course, at my house, we also play "Birthday" first thing in the morning on Christmas, and do pretty much the same dance, only holier, if that tells you anything about my family. At some point during the day, my friend Shana will call and sing Weird Al's "Happy Birthday to You," a cute tradition dating back eleven years, which has recently lost some of its innocence due to the fact that Shana is now pierced where the sun don't shine and is engaged to a Cleveland taxi driver with a mohawk.

Perhaps one of the reasons I'm so into my birthday is that I've never actually had the big birthday extravaganza that most kids hope for, with ponies and clowns (although I'm deathly afraid of them) and, I don't know, fire eaters or something. On my fifteenth birthday there was a cold snap and my phone lines froze over, causing me to have to spend the day next door at my well-meaning but, let's face it, creepy neighbors (they have a pipe organ, okay? They're weird.)

I was CPR certified on my sixteenth birthday (it was either that or fail health class), which meant I had to devote a large portion of the day putting my mouth on that weird dummy and screaming, "Annie, Annie are you okay? You! Call 911!"

The last two years I've had jazz ensemble concerts celebrating MLK on my birthday, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's kind of hard to be stuck up about your birthday when you're competing with a man that changed history. After all, my closest brush to glory was the day I got Kevin Mack's autograph in the second grade.

Don't get me wrong-- I'm not incredibly bent on my birthday or anything. I try to give this kind of attention to everyone on their big day. But really, no one I've met so far has been willing to do the "Birthday" dance with me, and that's about all I have to offer.