A Coming of Age
At the time of writing, it is my birthday. Well, technically, a couple of days after. You may be forgiven for forgetting—I’m not one to post birthday selfies on LinkedIn. Mainly because that requires two things: i) posing for pictures, and ii) writing an elusive yet passive-aggressive caption like, “Happy +1 birthday to me” or “29 years ago God manifested my life,” followed by either basic arithmetic or advice on prayers (hint: pray for a sugar daddy).
As most of my dear readers know, I leave my passive-aggressive musings for this column and save my more overtly aggressive outbursts for road-raging, where they belong.
Another reason I don’t post about my birthday on LinkedIn is because I barely use social media. On the one hand, I want to avoid influencers; on the other hand, I want to avoid remembering birthdays at all costs. Too much pressure: to congratulate or not to congratulate, that is the question. Yes, there’s something tragically Shakespearean about this: deep moral anguish over how well I know said person and whether my text should be as brief as a sonnet or as long-winded as a monologue. And like Shakespeare, I drag out the tragic suspense until the end, only to end up buying a kitsch, generic birthday card and a knock-off, off-off-brand t-shirt the morning of a birthday dinner.
There are many birthdays around my birthday. So, I’m usually a tad broke. I’m not financially broke—though, have you seen the prices of these knock-off t-shirts lately?—but broke in the sense that I’ve had too much cake, and I can only have so many “Have an awesome day!! :)” conversations. At least I didn’t buy them the bereavement card, which I was tempted to do. So, to avoid copying and pasting information in each interaction, I have to be strategic: I strictly need to know until asked. Which uncle did I talk to about sport again? And how much brain capacity do I have left to fake knowing about the English Premier League? Screw it. I’ll just talk to everyone about cricket again.
Recently, my brother turned eighteen. Collectively, my family is in firm denial that he is now an adult. We may just keep treating him like a toddler until further notice. But we’re also fed up with driving him everywhere, so the top priority is getting him a driver’s licence. After all, what’s the point of drinking if you can’t drive? He’ll also learn other equally important skills, like how to properly conduct road rage, when to honk, when to pull the middle finger, and what level of swearing is appropriate for each situation. Adulthood is, after all, about subtlety.
At work, I was asked if I went dancing on my birthday—clearly, my legendary moves have become the stuff of office lore. I am a pretty confident dancer, which translates to bad dance moves done confidently. That’s probably better than good dancing done confidently—you don’t want to be the person no one likes at a party, showing off while everyone else struggles to coordinate their feet, hands, and hips. Dancing well is practically an insult to our shared drunken sensibilities.
In the end, I didn’t go dancing for my birthday. Mainly because today’s music is either too new or too loud (though my brother’s taste is better than most of his age). Also, my birthday was on a Wednesday, and every young person knows birthdays should hover around the weekend. Is that growing up? I was pretty old to start with, and now this new coming-of-age feels like a transition to middle age—not like fine wine, mind you, more like a half-empty two-litre bottle of Coke that’s been sitting in the fridge for a week—still sweet, but lacking all its fizz and dignity.
