{Birthdays} in the Middle Ages: When Did Everyone Get So Lame?

Does Hallmark make a “Sorry you hit the age of apathy” card? I’m wandering around my thirties, like a CVS aisle, not sure where to look.

I’m in what I call “the middle ages.” Those years when your birthday has the least significance it ever will. Like a long stretch of road without any highlights or landmarks (not to be confused with New Jersey), those mid- to late-20s and early 30s birthdays come and go with just a whimper.

Does birthday exuberance run out?

Is this a failing of ideas or energy? When did we give up? Why does it feel so forced and insincere? I’m all questions, no answers.

As kids we got goody bags, gifts galore, and one of those cakes with frosting that turned your tongue electric blue. In college, we had the unquestionable energy to turn birthdays into major holidays, sometimes even into three-day festivals. Even for a few years after college, there were the blurry cover band nights, the trips to Medieval Times, the city-wide scavenger hunts, or aggressive nights out that warranted canceling all plans the next day.

There was a time when each year granted me a new superpower. At 17 I could go to the movies without my parents; at 18 I earned a tiny, tiny say in government; at 21 I could buy beer without worrying myself into a pants-shitting. #notallheroeswearcapes

But for the past few years, birthdays have been a most forgettable collage of Facebook notifications, texts that are phoned-in both literally and figuratively, and get-togethers that are planned around the tame things that make people unlikely to say no.

Case in point, my last four birthday “events” have been brunch, watching a Celtics playoff game, a front yard BBQ, and most recently, vacated because my wife had friends in town. These are the birthdays of a suburban father of two, not a 31 year-old city-dweller.

If birthdays were ordered from a menu, we’ve gone from ordering things with four chili pepper icons to cautiously asking the waiter if that single chili pepper item is going to be too spicy.

I’ve had enough with the apathetic backslide into boring. I want to reclaim some of that old spark. Recently, when I asked my friends if they would go laser-tagging on my birthday. They laughed at me, like I was joking. But I was very very not joking.

Do you know what I would give to get a group of my 30-something friends to stop worrying about normative behaviors and come do something fun? Come on, you guys, let’s put on some sweatpants and destroy a bunch of 8 year-olds dressed as Minions. And be proud of it!

Look, I’m not going to be that guy who never gives it up.

I’ve got a life of dinner parties in my future, but I’m in no rush for that.

At some point, I know, this serene road gets rocky. Years tick off and birthdays become reminders of mortality. Each of those birthdays are pre-set to be the worse than the last, an Office Space-like realization that every birthday is actually the worst birthday you’ve ever had. And if this is what becoming a full-grown adult is… hard pass.