Friday was my birthday. I am now 57 years old, which surprises me a great deal.
I didn’t have much to do with achieving this milestone, apart from not dying, which has more to do with the grace of God than my cavalier attitude toward angry bosses, power tools and clearly posted speed limits.
On the other hand, by this age, I did hope to have more hair and a Tesla in the driveway.
On the subject of no Tesla in the driveway, exactly how many hints does a guy have to drop on the run-up to his birthday? At this age, you can only expect to receive a) short phone messages; b) shorter text messages; or c) nothing at all.
Which is a kind of blessing in that every birthday is a reminder of being a little older, a little slower and a little dumber.
I don’t mean you. I mean the five-year-old you that used to be. Five-year-old Dave went out of his mind with the thought of friends coming over for cake and games and, if I’m being honest, presents.
Think back to the magic of those first 20 or so birthdays! Almost every nation on Earth celebrates being here for another personal trip around the sun, and not all of them with presents and a sugar headache.
Many cultures celebrate birthdays with physical violence. In Spain, they tug hard on your ear once for every year you’ve lived, and then one more torture yank for extra luck.
Mormons in my small-town southern Alberta neighbourhood liked to give people “the bumps,” which involved picking up the unlucky birthday boy by the wrists and ankles and then dropping him to the concrete on his rear end, once for every year.
Hmmm … thinking back on this, I don’t know if it was a Mormon thing or I just lived in a hard neighbourhood.
They didn’t do it to the Catholic kids, tough Italian immigrants whose fathers all owned construction companies with plenty of sledgehammers and nail guns to hand.
Speaking of Italy, social rules there dictate you must open your birthday gift immediately when it is given, or you risk appearing rude. Naturally, you must do this while drinking thick espresso and smoking a cigarette in one hand, and violently gesturing with the other hand so as to appear sincere.
In many Latin American countries, girls’ 15th birthdays are considered a significant milestone, marking the beautiful beginning of womanhood and more mature responsibilities, such as waking up before noon on weekends.
Latinos call this birthday “Quinceañera,” which roughly translates as, “Help us, O God, survive a few more years of teenage attitude and outrageous cellphone bills.”
It is a festive event, beginning with a Mass, followed by a lavish party and then mucho crying because you didn’t buy her a Lululemon belt bag in the correct shade of pink.
A significant 21st-century birthday tradition in Australia is ecological disaster, including heat waves, bushfires, surprise flooding and saltwater crocodiles. This new way to celebrate has replaced the older tradition of eating “fairy bread,” a light cake made with white bread, butter, multicoloured sprinkles and saltwater crocodiles.
The standard American birthday party typically begins and ends with firearms (test firing, firing for real, firing by accident, firing because there is still ammo in the clip).
In between, it is traditional to pledge allegiance to the flag, eat the frosted diabetes cake, sing the national anthem, and pledge to stamp out “wokeness,” after which everyone drives his or her F-150 home with a fun “goody bag” full of Jim Beam and lunatic MAGA conspiracy theories.
When I was growing up in the 1970s, the prairie birthday tradition was to serve a “money cake,” where coins were individually wrapped in wax paper and baked into ready-mix cake batter. The name does not derive from the small change itself, but rather the medical bills resulting from chipped teeth and clogged gastrointestinal systems.
Elsewhere in Canada, if the Atlantic provinces are still part of our Dominion (NOTE TO SELF: look this up before print deadline or you will look stupid), a favourite birthday tradition is “buttered nose,” which is said to help children slip away from bad luck, and into bad acne. The practice of buttering noses began in Scotland, where so much bizarre but delightful folklore begins.
The following genuine Scottish birthday greeting may explain what I mean: “Happy birthday here’s a wish, as anither year rins oot, stay ay’ways young inside yer heid, an’ dinnae gie a hoot!”
Then alcohol, haggis, neeps, tatties, more alcohol, reciting of poetry, still more alcohol and, finally, fist fighting. I say all that by way of an explanation/apology to the neighbours for all the noise on Thursday evening, which of course was Robbie Burns (born Jan. 25, 1759) Day.
Ah, drat. That reference to my long-suffering neighbours reminds me of the Tesla-shaped absence on the driveway.
Phone and text messages and leftover birthday cake are cold comfort. All that is left me is to re-sing the birthday song. It is now in the public domain, meaning neither five-year-old nor 57-year-old Dave will be sued when he changes the lyrics to suit the mood:
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you.
You look like a monkey, and you smell like one, too.
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
