Birthdays

Once a year you'll have to deal with your birthday. You don't hate your birthday because it marks a year of getting older and, therefore, closer to death. No. You hate your birthday because everyone you know gets weird around you that day and tries to give you things. Since receiving a gift is on the same anxiety level for you as receiving blood test results, your birthday should be something you dread, mentally avoid and, ultimately, start lying to people about.

One of the worst things that happens on your birthday is that someone might try to sing fucking goddamn Happy Birthday to you. If this starts to happen, your body should begin to go through a few phases, the first of which is disbelief. Surely this can't be happening to me, you'll think. Eventually, you'll pass from disbelief into horror, especially if this is taking place in public, like at a restaurant or your office. It's similar to the type of horror you'd experience if someone were stabbed in front of you or if you found out you had Lou Gehrig's disease. Finally, and this will be toward the very end of the song, near the last, excruciatingly drawn-out "Haaaapy biiiiiirthdaaaay tooooooooo........yoooouuuuuu!", you will begin to drown in a potent, acidic shame. Your ears will burn and you'll instinctively look for open windows out of which to pitch your body.

The look on your face while all of this is happening will also, god willing, be caught on camera and shared with you via email or a social networking site. Then you will get to deal with people commenting things like "Why do you look so constipated?"

In order to avoid all of this, it's best to never tell anyone about your birthday, ever. The sad truth is, though, some people already know. And these people will post it all over your Facebook wall, so that anyone you know that didn't know it was your birthday will find out, and then berate you for not telling them sooner. You'll be made to feel like a bad person just because you didn't go around essentially begging for gifts from your friends. Because that's what telling people about your birthday amounts to. Panhandling.