This is the last Friday that I’m 40. My birthday is Monday and I’m partially psyched.
I always love my birthday, and wax rhapsodic about it. But a MONDAY birthday? Eh. That’s like having a colonoscopy on your wedding day. “Don’t worry, sweetie! You’ll get the bad stuff out of the way in the morning and then you can celebrate in the evening.” Please.
I imagine it’s worse now for the little kids. At least when I was a child parents were allowed to bring in cupcakes, candies or other assorted birthday treats. For awhile there–from about third to fifth grade–it started to turn into one of those Mother One-Upmanship deals where all the moms tried to prove to the others that they were the coolest by bringing the most inventive treat. Man, was that awesome! Cupcakes baked into icecream cones, tiny baskets made of rice krispie treats and filled with candy…it was a child’s paradise. Now I hear that those sorts of things are banned by the health patrol (what a fascist state this is turning into) so any kid with a Monday birthday is just left with a Monday birthday.
I’ve begun to infer from the culture around me that it is appropriate to make up new rules about one’s birthday once one turns 40. Some people stop celebrating them, which is sort of like refusing to take a shower because of your water bill. Other people refuse to acknowledge their actual age, thinking it cute to say they are “39 PLUS!” Man, I fought all my childhood to be grown-up. I think it’s a cheat to turn my back on adulthood now. I love being 40, almost 41. Granted there are times where I am shocked at the thought of how little time I have left, but I figure what the heck. It goes down easier if you celebrate. Anyway, the rule I made–and I think I may have said this before–is to always celebrate on Memorial Day weekend now. It’s always right there rubbing shoulders against my birthday anyway. Depending on how the calendar falls it sometimes IS my actual birthday. So I’m embracing the national holiday as a chance to Memorial my Birthday and not being so bummed about this Monday Birthday deal.
I also need to warn you all who know me about next year. Next year is the big birthday and I intend to celebrate it in monumental style. It’s my 42nd and we will be having a gigantic Don’t Panic! She’s Mostly Harmless! Meaning of it All Celebration. Save the date now, friends.
Two words: “birthday weekend.”
Happy early birthday!
I love this post! When I was around 16 I somehow convinced myself that people wouldn’t take me seriously until I was 40. For years I awaited it anxiously, as if that magical number would mean I was never treated as a girl again finally treated respectfully as an intelligent woman. Now at 38, I’m fairly certain the problem is societal and not my actual age. I was recently told that I seemed 27. It was meant as a compliment but I’m been fuming over it as insult. It feels still as if being told I look and act younger is step backwards in my journey to being a wise woman of a certain age.
That’s my long-winded way of saying CONGRATULATIONS on making it to what will surely be the best years yet! I’ll raise a glass to your raised status. Even if that status is only in my head.
+10 for the Hitchhiker’s reference
I never understood or liked the “never ask a woman her age” standard. Not really because I want to go around asking (presumably older) women their age, but because it presupposes that women are insecure about getting older, or see it as a negative.
I think it should be free reign as it is with the dudes. It might be a throwback from the aristocratic propriety that kind of isn’t “needed” anymore…and this is coming from someone who is a bit leery about feminism/post-feminism culture.
Happy birthday, too. Forgot to say that in the midst of my gassing on and such.
KC,
Birthday fun on Sunday? Have we the “all clear”?
So… if someone were to bring you cupcakes, what flavor(s) would you hope that someone would bring?
We do indeed have the all clear, although we havent decided what food we are going to have. We are still a bit off eating from the meds. That wilk be over by tomorrow, so Sunday will be all clear. As to theoretical cupcakes…if it has frosting, i’m happy.
I wrote this on an iPad with the “help” of Autocorrect. Please excuse any weird out of context words or odd typos.
Have a wonderful Birthday!
What Rachel said, yes.
What I’m curious about is when the bringing cupcakes&stuff to class on your birthday started. Because I am older than you, and we didn’t do it at my school, and no one I knew at the time in other schools did it, and none of the books I read about kids in school mentioned the custom. (Though the kindergarten teacher at my school baked a cake for every kid’s birthday.) So I’m led to believe that it’s not that my school was a bastion of anti-birthdayness or anti-cupcakeness in a world of celebration, but that this wasn’t common in the early ’60s for birthdays to have class-inclusive celebrations. And at some point I realized that I was hearing about it everywhere, all the time (or at least whenever children’s birthdays were being mentioned). But when did it start, and why? Was it in the ’70s, as a way for the stay-at-home mothers to score points against working mothers and bash on feminism? Or was it later, when people my age started having their own children and wanting them to have everything, just everything?
Well, I was a kid in the 1970s–born in 1970–and I ALWAYS got the vibe that it was a Mom-against-Mom thing. Partly because the same girls who were the Mean Girls were also letting everyone know that their mom was making the coolest treats. So we kids were aware of a competition of sorts; i’m SURE the mothers were too. One year my mom “won” by making the cupcakes-baked-in-cones things. The next year she went back to work (her youngest child started school) and i took plain old cupcakes that I made the night before. One of the Mean Girls made a snide comment about how “that’s okay we know your mom is WORKING”, thus making teaching Econ sound like whoring for smack.
So now that you mention it, from the perspective of distance I think it was very likely a 1970s woman v. woman thing.
sigh.
Happy early birthday, though. I realized about 2 years ago that for the first time in my life I honestly wasn’t automatically aware of my age. In the sense that, when asked about it, I had to do the math. I find it upsetting, and one thing I’m concentrating on this year is knowing how old I am.
I do have a (male) friend who celebrates his “annual 18th birthday” and I think he started that at 30. Parents only ever bday treats for the class when I was in private preschool and kindergarten, I don’t recall it happening once I started in public school. Though I learned that I don’t like coconut when my mom made a coconut cake for me to take to school for my birthday, so it’s not a tradition I have fond memories of anyways (still remember the cake though, it was shaped like a panda and completely covered in coconut shavings to make it look furry).
Hope you have a happy birthday weekend and even a happy monday!
Happy Birthday. Now I want rice krispie treats…
[...] She's 41, And Her Daddy Still Calls Her “Baby” « Just Another … Cupcakes baked into icecream cones, tiny baskets made of rice krispie treats and filled with candy…it was a child's paradise. Now I hear that those sorts of things are banned by the health patrol (what a fascist state this is Happy early birthday I love this post! When I was around 16 I somehow convinced myself that people wouldn't take me seriously until I was 40. For years I awaited it anxiously, as if that magical number would mean I was never [...]