There comes a point when the hanging of streamers, opening presents and blowing out candles loses its thunder. Birthdays,
a once age-appropriate celebration, progressively become either a public announcement of impending expiration or a plea for attention (or both). Past our ripest days, we wrinkle, fester and begin to smell of funk just as we realize the importance of celebrating in ways people will remember fondly, and looking back you’ll smile knowing it was not in a jet-fueled blackout of creaky dancing and aggressive courting that ends badly at a burrito stand around 2 o’clock in the morning. It’s time we start celebrating right — like grown men.
No New Friends
If you’re past your mid-twenties, you’re old enough to know that the friends you have now are likely the best you’ll ever have, and if you don’t have a lot of friends, then maybe you’re not that lovable to begin with. Either way, now is not the time to go out attempting to wrangle new friends to stick on your old ones. The friends you’ve had have been nice enough to put up with you for all these years that they don’t need to put up with some last chance dance at desperately becoming Mr. Popular again. It’s time you sat back, appreciated what you have at this time and sweetly embraced every passing moment of your life with the people who know your sick mind the best.
Party Like a Mild Child
Although you’ve been down this road enough times to know it doesn’t overexcite you anymore, if you’re going to celebrate, you might as well do it right. The last thing you want to do is wind up doing the no-pants dance at the local Hooters with a mouthful of buffalo wings as your friends all take videos to further document this long road to hell. Instead of partying cheap and hard, waking up wishing you hadn’t, why not party like a grown man, which varies in its form but usually involves early mornings of reflection, gentlemanly conversations and fine evening liquors. Go someplace you never get to go – doesn’t have to be anything wild – a horse track, ballgame or just enjoy the bliss of sitting in a lawn chair, sipping life’s wares and doing absolutely nothing worry-free. No need for strippers; it’s just a birthday, not a bachelor’s last detour from monogamy.
Gainful Reminders
In the grand scheme of life and all the lives you may ever live, what is a birthday really other than another worldly reminder of the things you’ve yet to accomplish? If nothing else, as a grown man it’s smart to use these days as a reminder that you’re still growing, still learning and eventually going to accomplish great things if you stick with it. But in the meantime, it’s a painful calendar day calling you out on your lacking, turning the age up another number while you ball up the fist and cringe more frown lines into your forehead, thus looking older too. Birthdays have the fine quality of gut-checking our shortcomings and motivating a better road ahead. Without them, we’d just carry on oblivious to how little we’ve done.
Zero Is More
The worst part of any birthday, other than its awkward surprises and overhyped anticipation, is being reduced to a younger version of yourself where people decorate your home with cheap ’80s style party supplies, the likes of banners, balloons and, dare I say, birthday hats? – the most heinous of all. Before it’s time to cut the cak
e and open gifts while people take your picture as you smile that half-grin-half-cry, you’ve got your fist around a bottle of some strange spirits you’d never normally drink just to chug your way from this reality. You want to tell everyone you’re a grown man and you’d like to celebrate as such, or not at all, but instead bite down on your tongue and let everyone make you feel like an ass once more. From now on, tell people how it’s going to be and make fair warning that streamers mean trouble.
If It Ain’t Chocolate, Send It Back
Although the birthday of a grown man usually comes and goes like farts in a wind storm, we usually have the opportunity at some point to indulge ourselves, whether a cocktail for a recovering alcoholic or chocolate frosting for a diabetic. Even if it’s not on the day, it’s important to treat ourselves for another year of living above ground and perhaps a few strides in the right direction. One thing we should never do, especially as a grown man, is hold back on happiness, even more-so on one’s birthday because you never know which one will be your finale. It may be a cheap excuse to get what you want, go someplace or buy something you shouldn’t, but it’s a viable excuse, so you might as well cash it in before it’s gone. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want, and if people get it wrong, you tell them it’s your fucking birthday, and make it again!
Everything (Kind of) Zen
Birthdays rarely go as we’d expect them to, but if you’re lucky, they’ll mean less and less as the years swing by, and your appreciation for normal days – when the phone stays quiet, Facebook isn’t honking at you and people aren’t paying you too much attention – will multiply by infinity. As a grown man, you learn to appreciate all these things and life in general with every morning that comes to you, so that when people ask you what you want for your precious personal holiday or how you want to spend it, your genuine answer is “I really don’t care.”
Get to a place like that in your life – where you finally understand why your father never made a fuss on his special day – and birthdays will suddenly become the worst day of the year, not because you’re getting older or haven’t sailed across seven seas, but because everything is in its right place to the point you wouldn’t change a damn thing, a truly champagne problem indeed.
