I am turning 52 in a few days. I do not know if senility is starting to set in but I feel I am becoming more and more sensitive about birthdays.
2 years ago, I never knew I was turning 50 and that being 50 was big deal. It took a surprise birthday gift from Cecille, a trip to Boracay actually, for me to realize something unusual is afoot, that a chapter is being started, that I am old.
And old I think I am which is why anything birthday related is contentious topic.
Like birthday gifts.
For some reason, it has become a habit for friends and relations to ask what the celebrant wants to have for his birthday only to give him something "they" want rather than what "the celebrant" himself wants. You know I love to bike, why the long sleeve office shirts? Very puzzling indeed.
Which is why I think weddings are easier.
Many wives may strongly disagree with this timid view but I personally feel weddings always turn into truly memorable events because it has “The Wedding Registry.” The new couple are assured they won't get twice as many punch bowls, twice as many wall clocks or electric fans or frying pans or self cleaning flat irons.
Above all, they can also safely bet that no redundant wedding gift from someone's else's nuptial will find itself “re-wrapped and re-presented.”
Wedding Registries should be the envy of birthday celebrants. Nothing beats writing what you think you need and then actually getting it. Wedding registries are very much like owning a genie in a lamp.
Imagine that happening on birthdays. Imagine if there is also such thing as “The Birthday Registry.”
Think about truly receiving that stuff you have been dreaming of and drooling over for the last 11 months, not something which was hurriedly paid for and then wrapped without much thought accompanying it.
At last you can be sure you will be getting biking shorts and not neckties.
Yes, I am old and am, indeed, getting very sensitive about birthdays.
