Birthday Troubles

It seems to be rather in vogue these days to wish people for their birthdays at midnight. Some friends like to take things even further and arrive at the home of the "unsuspecting" birthday boy or girl with a cake at precisely 12 o'clock. Needless to say, I don't understand the reasons behind any of the above.

Personally, I'm not much for birthdays. Okay, so you're "turning a year older" -- what's so special about that again? I don't get it. Still, since most people would like to appropriate one day in the year to call their own, and maybe do something special on that day, I suppose tradition has seen to it that we use the day we were born on for that purpose. This much I can understand.

Now what's with the fascination of wishing at midnight? I have to say, I'd be extremely annoyed if someone woke me up at midnight just to convey their birthday wishes. Why midnight? I wasn't born at midnight. If anything I "turn the year" at the time that I was born -- which for me is sometime around 9.45pm. If you want to call me, wait for about 21 more hours and then call me at 9.45 the following night. It makes slightly -- but only slightly -- more sense.

If the exact day or date on which you were born mattered at all, then I'd expect everyone born on a February 29th in a leap year to lead extremely unsuccessful and unhappy lives and grow up four times as slowly as the rest of the population. But that doesn't happen, does it?

So if your birthday doesn't matter, why make a big fuss about it all? My birthday is exactly like any other day of the year. In fact, if it weren't for having to write it while filling in forms, I'd have long forgotten which day of the year I was born on.