Happy birthday to me today!
(I won't get to write that for a another few years.)
Yes, my mom was oh-so-lucky to have given birth to me on New Year's Eve. So much for ringing in the new year.
A birthday on New Year's Eve is not near as fun as one might think. Actually, it's quite the opposite. Everyone was always filled with so much anticipation for the parties celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of another, that often, my birthday was forgotten.
When you're young, birthdays are supposed to be cause for excitement, but since it fell only six days after Christmas, my parents usually just rolled them into one big super holiday. This really meant I got shafted.
Yay for me!
When I got a little older, all my friends were so stoked for the New Year's Eve parties, I usually only received a quick "Happy Birthday" and that was that.
Maybe birthdays never would have been a big deal to me if I just received the same acknowledgement as everyone else received on their birthdays. When my friends celebrated their birthdays - especially in high school - it was a big event. Everyone went out, the birthday person was the "star" for the night and therefore, received all the attention.
Or maybe that's why I hated having a birthday on New Year's Eve. I never received any attention. In case people haven't noticed, or I have failed to properly explain this in the past, I liked attention as a teenager. Unfortunately, I hardly received any.
Whoa, news story of the year, a high school girl feeling invisible to the world.
But the fact of the matter was I hated feeling ignored - especially on the one day a year that was supposed to be mine.
Then came the year I turned 21.
I was dating this boy at the time who decided Vegas would be a great place to spend my 21st birthday. All the fireworks, excitement and people, I could imagine as though it was all for me.
Well, we went a few days early, (Vegas + under 21= not as much fun as Vegas + over 21), and by the time my birthday rolled around I had exhausted myself to the point of being sick - all without a sip of alcohol.
Mind you, the night before my birthday I met Penn and Teller - whom I absolutely adore - and Teller, who never speaks in their comedic magician act, sang happy birthday to me. That was definitely the highlight of my trip.
Watching fireworks countdown the moments to the New Year in Vegas was spectacular, too. In fact, looking back that very well may have been the year when I just stopped caring whether or not my birthday was celebrated.
By the time my 22nd birthday rolled around, my whole perspective had changed. I was dating my now amazingly wonderful significant other, and we didn't spend a single moment that day thinking about how we would ring in the new year, or about how we would celebrate my birthday.
We just drove.
We had been in Golden, B.C. the day before, and were now on our way home. By the time we arrived to my Winnipeg apartment, it was a half hour to midnight and truthfully, the ringing in of the New Year passed without our notice.
Every since then, New Year's Eve has been "just another day," so when I do receive a "Happy Birthday," a gift, or a nice dinner out, I know it has nothing to do with the New Year.
It's all for me.
