Birthday Types

Go me... go me... it's my birthday... :)

Yes today is my birthday. The 3rd anniversary of my 29th birthday. I have a theory when it comes to people's attitudes toward birthdays. I haven't conducted extensive psychological research on the subject, but from from my limited and unscientific research I have concluded that there are 3 different Birthday personality types.

----------------------------------------------

1) "I like presents"
People like to feel liked/loved, especially on special occasions. According to this book http://www.fivelovelanguages.com/learn.html people understand and interpret love in different ways. This book talks specifically about relationships, but I think these concepts apply to friendships too. [I think this type corresponds well with the "Receiving Gifts" section of the website above.] To summarize, the "I like presents" attitude isn't a bad thing, it doesn't mean they're greedy. I think it just means that those types "respond well to visual symbols of love" or friendship. They see gifts, big or small, as an expression of love (or friendship, like, caring, etc.), and on the flip side the lack of gifts can feel like a lack of that love (or friendship, like, caring, etc.) to that person.


2) "I just want to forget that it's my birthday"
This is the person who doesn't want any extra attention just because it's their birthday. It doesn't feel much like a special occasion to these types of people, it is just another day that just so happens to correspond with the date of their birth. Sometimes people might adopt this type if they feel "old." Sometimes people simply don't care for the hoopla.


3) "Pay attention to me, it's my birthday!"
This is the person who just wants to have fun and have lots of friends around to help celebrate their birthday. They like to have one day where they feel special, and like the extra attention that goes along with it. Even people who are not normally "attention hogs" sometimes love to be the center of attention on this one day.

----------------------------------------------

I fall in the 3rd category. I normally hate having attention drawn to me, except for this one day of the year. On this day I'm ok with being the center of attention, and I get to be special. I guess part of it is that by having lots of friends surrounding me on my birthday, I feel liked. On the other hand, not having people around on that one day sucks way more than usual. The more special the birthday, the more lonely it is when nobody is around. I can still recall my 16th birthday when I invited 10-15 friends over, and 2 came. Or my 18th birthday when I invited several friends and only 1 person came (and that was my boyfriend at the time, so kind of a no-brainer.) Of course my family was there, which was great, but it was easy for them because we lived in the same house :)

Once I left for college (and even since college) I usually celebrate with my family on a day that's not exactly my birthday, but close. No disappointing times there, my mom usually makes me a cake, yumm :) But I still remember my 21st birthday when nobody was available because everyone "had to study." Granted it was a Wednesday night, but it was college, people skip studying and class all the time right? Kinda. Well, instead I went around campus to visit friends one by one and hang out with each of them a little bit at a time, making them take a short break from their studies to hang out with me. One of these friends was learning to program in the programming language C. And while I had only taken classes in the Pascal language up to that point, I knew the basic concepts of what his assignment was about, and the language was similar enough that I could read his textbook and figure out the syntax enough to help him out. So, yes, I basically got my first self-lesson in C programming on my 21st birthday.

After that, I think I stopped caring for a few years and became a #2 birthday type for awhile. I figured, if you have no hopes or expectations, you can't be as disappointed. It worked. But, since moving to Columbus I think I've had some pretty good birthday parties with lots of caring friends around to help make it happy, so I've gone back to being a #3. And I think my 30th was the best. I recall a smaller low-key group of people at my house, playing games, listening to music, and it seemed like everyone was mixing well and everyone was having a good time. For me, that's a good birthday. 31 came close to that good. Hopefully this year will as well :)

So, what's your birthday type?