Birthday countdown - 18 days!

When I was 18 I had a friend who had a TOTALLY fucked up way of determining if he would consider you a friend. He said that you were only his friend if you would do "ANYTHING" for him. And by anything he meant anything - step in front of a bus if he requested it, eat live cockroaches, shave your head. He said he didn't have many friends because he wouldn't do many things for many people and knew that most people wouldn't do what we demanded of them. I still chose to call him "friend" even though I clearly would not have shaved my head for him. Or most anything else. I do feel like I would do a lot for a friend. But I don't do things because they are expected or demanded, I do things because I care and want to help.

ANYWAY.

One way that I gauge a level of friendship is how people treat the days, occasions, events that they know, or should know, are important to you. Like if Christmas is my husband's favorite holiday, damn straight I'm gunna do it up for him. And well, I tend to sort of assume how much someone cares about me by whether or not they remember or/and acknowledge my birthday. My Birthday is ab-so-lute-ly-withoutadoubt my most favorite day of the year and anyone within earshot of me during the month of March will know it! So if you are a good friend and I don't hear from you well I take that personally, assume you don't care about me, move you down the list and move on (with two or three hundred other judgments thrown in between those last two steps). Now, casual friends are forgiven. Good friends are not.

I dunno, maybe friendship shouldn't be measured at all. Maybe we should just accept what people can give and not put any additional pressures or judgments on them. We obviously have no idea what is going on in other people's lives or bedrooms. There is a line in a TV on the Radio song that goes something like "Life is a measly portion, light on good friends and fortune." It's true. You can have 1,256 friends combined in your Twitter, Facebook and Myspace accounts but the really truly good friends are rare, and, well, this is why I need to measure them. Since I am still human and fiercely flawed I will continue to hope that my good friends remember my birthday because I want to love you, I really do, but I also tend to look for reason's not to trust or care about people, so just don't give me one, ok?

So I was thinking about all this last night while I was brushing my teeth (it takes much longer to read it or type it than it does to think about it btw) and I was wondering if Neil and Sharon remember by birthday. Neil and Sharon are not my cats or my friends from 7th grade. They're my parents. And I was thinking how totally bizarre it is to wonder if your parents remember your birthday. Even though I haven't see one for 33 years and the other for 17 years I still sort of assume they remember. And wonder what I'm doing. And then wonder where I am living so they can call and ask me for money. They probably assume I answer the phone and would never guess that I have a borderline phobia about using the phone. The parents in Sixteen Candles forgot Molly Ringwald's birthday. But they had a lot going on that day. Birthdays probably get forgotten ALL THE TIME. But seriously people how totally fucking lame is that. Don't forget a birthday. It's an important day. Tomorrow I'll write about why.