Birthday bashing
Birthdays are meant to celebrate, but who should you celebrate? | PC: Kevin Niederman
Column like I see em'
Why do we celebrate birthdays? I don't like to celebrate mine.
I mostly just hate special attention. I like to blend in with crowds and tend to feel super uncomfortable when eyes start looking my direction.
Everyone seems so excited for it to be their birthday, and to celebrate other folks’ birthdays, but why? What did you do to earn your birth? Why should your birthday be celebrated?
If anyone, it's your mother who’s celebrated on your birthday. It should be HER birthday. She's the one who actually gave birth.
She spent five to fifteen hours straining and struggling to purge a five to fifteen pound, multi-limbed, fully-functional, breathing person from one of the smallest orifices in her body.
It took Leonardo Da Vinci like, twenty years to paint a picture, but your mom PASSIVELY made you over a nine month period. She didn't even try. It's quite possible it was even an accident.
Could Jackson Pollock have accidentally made his painting Autumn Rhythm? Just drank a bunch of paint in an attempted suicide, only to vomit up one of the greatest paintings of our time?
Yes.
Yes he could, but that doesn't matter.
What does matter is you're just a pumpkin, and your mom is the farmer. Indulge in my metaphor for a moment.
She spends all these years making sure you have the water, fertilizer and sunshine necessary to grow into the biggest, best pumpkin this world has ever seen. You just kinda sit there and get fatter, mindlessly consuming whatever is handed to you.
And when you get all big and impressive, your mom wheels you down to the harvest fair, enters you in the pumpkin contest, and wins first place. But when the judges come over to offer their obligational congratulations, they offer it to the pumpkin.
“You grew so well, pumpkin!” “Yeah you really sat there and effortlessly did absolutely nothing better than any other vegetable I know.”
The farmer just gets to stand there awkwardly, watching her pumpkin garner all the money and praise, while she gets nothing. No acknowledgement. No respect, especially from her pumpkin.
Is your birthday the anniversary of some great accomplishment? Did you finally pass that test that allows you to be an independent, functional member of society?
No. You haven't done a thing.
Is your age a number denoting a particular amount of wisdom you've tirelessly pursued and acquired? Does it actually show that, after reaching 18, you're fully prepared and certified to make decisions about whether or not to smoke? Are you really qualified to help in deciding which person will lead our country for the next four years?
Good thing that here in Nebraska you need a level 19 wisdom license before consenting to sexual intercourse. That really keeps unwanted pregnancy rates and the spread of venereal disease down, doesn't it?
No. Age does not beget wisdom. Experience does.
Your birthday is literally the anniversary of that time you sat there, watched your mom do all the work to bring you into this world, after which you immediately started complaining about it.
And you wouldn't shut up for the rest of your life.
Kevin Niederman is a junior studying nursing