Extending birthdays seems like an idea whose time has come

Forget the hand-held games, the incredibly intricate phones, the cyber this, that and the other thing. That’s all child’s play, my friends. It’s all useful stuff that really doesn’t hold a candle to what I’ve discovered is the biggest societal dodge of all – and it reeks of ageism.

Have you heard the kids today talk about their birthday “weekend?” Sure you have, but that’s only the tip of the proverbial celebratory iceberg.

No, no, there’s also the “birthday week” and, if you can believe it, I’ve heard some actually utter the hard-to-fathom phrase of “birthday month.”

Right! Right! I can hear you folks of a certain, older age wondering what in the name of William Shatner is going on here? What is this new concept of getting days, a week, a month of celebration for one’s birthday?

I find it grotesque and needy, as well as realize that I’m extremely jealous I didn’t think of this scam way back when. A whole weekend to celebrate your birthday, a week or more to be the chosen one, the special child, the head of the “whatta kid” club for longer than a few hours once a year?

Society is coming apart, my friends, with this lingering love of the birthday, and the attendant revelry that, I’m told, can accompany it. It’s wrong, and we all know it. And yet … one wonders about the glory of it all.

I would have been so into that back in the day when there were no cell phones, no Internet, very little AC, and the information superhighway was whatever gossip you could pick up around the corner or down the street.

My generation missed out on the elongated birthday celebrations and I’m a little irritated by it.

I recently had a birthday. It occurs each year on a recently passed holiday that often includes lots of lights, lots of noise, gatherings in the park, and some livestock trying to throw riders off their backs.

You know how long I celebrated? Neither do I. I worked that day, interspersing a few frosty ones with some picture taking and chatting with people and eating yummy noodles fresh off a wok. And it has been that way for most of my professional life. And while I’m used to it and make the best of the day, I can’t help but now wonder what a “birthday week” could look like. What have I been missing?

What, at this age, could I get up to if the whole week of my birthday was spent in communal efforts to make me happy, to kowtow to my merest whims, to genuflect in the presence of the “birthday boy?”

At least, that’s what stretching a birthday out over a week or longer would seem to me to indicate is needed to make it the festive event of your personal season. Do people even give gifts or have birthday parties anymore?

But a weeklong event? Man, the totality of running the show for that long at this age would be magical. I would require absolute familial obedience and catering to my every birthday whim.

You know, as someone from the older generation, it is fairly obvious that we elderly enjoy slamming the younger generations as a matter of course. I don’t know if it’s because we’re older and kind of resent their youthful naivete, strange language, or ability to take things for granted and embrace entitled behavior in a way that seems confusing and aggravating to us. Yeah, I suppose that’s it.

But this birthday weekend/week/month concept is really a source of brilliance. It gives the birthday a more Christmas-like feel and offers the opportunity to just have it be all about “me” for an extended time. You youngsters, you keep coming up with those good ideas. What you lack in maturity and common sense you make up for in whimsey and a “It’s about me” mentality.

It’s too late for me this year, good people. But those of you with birthdays coming up, you can make all our dreams come true. Go on, have a “birthday week,” and finally get the kudos and subservient reactions you so deserve. A week all about you getting older? Magical.

I’ll be looking on and living through you vicariously – until next July 4.