I just had a birthday. Let me correct that: I just had ANOTHER birthday. Before you start congratulating me on going through another year with most of my hair and a fair amount of my own teeth intact, let me tell you that I wasn’t particularly thrilled about the occasion. In fact, I would have been happy to have slept the whole time. Then again, I feel like this most days.

Do not misunderstand. I am not one of those men who are so afraid of growing old that they would wring the neck of the sweet bird of youth until its eyes bulged out. You know who I’m talking about, that jerk at the stop light in the red Miata with the top down and the Greek formula dripping down the side of his face. He has a cell phone glued to his ear, probably talking to his plastic surgeon about his impending cosmetic surgery or his personal trainer about how to get rid of those love handles that fall down the sides of his calvins. Whoops, gotta go, 20-year-old girlfriend on the other line. Thank goodness for call waiting and vitamin E.

Why go to all the trouble to stay young when getting old requires so little effort? I’ve had youth, and if my memory of aging serves me right, it seems I spent most of my time sitting around wishing I was older.

Birthday or not, I’m not dyeing my hair. I’m not going to join a health club. And the only plastic surgery I’ll ever get will probably involve a pair of scissors and a maxed out Home Depot card. However, I wouldn’t mind having a red Miata and a cell phone. Every man needs a toy or two.

My apathy for birthdays has nothing to do with aging. I just don’t see the point in celebrating the anniversary of what was undoubtedly the most traumatic day of my life.

Fortunately, God blocks the memory of our births from our minds because He knows it would be too much for us mere mortals to handle. We already blame our mothers for enough. Why put the blame on them for our eviction in this landlord-tenant biological dispute?

We can only imagine what it must have been like. There you are, minding your own business, your dog paddling in the dark. He is nice and warm, safe, welcoming. Then – BAM! Someone unplugs your parents’ wave pool and all hell breaks loose!

You are thrown headlong into an incredibly brilliant place where a hysterical woman is screaming at a poor man who has passed out on the floor, calling him horrible names and accusing his parents of never getting married. Suddenly, you’re hung upside down and patted on the butt by someone claiming to be a licensed member of the medical profession! What kind of voodoo medicine is this, you ask? If anyone should get slapped it’s that screaming hysterical woman, certainly not you.

I suppose we should be thankful that being hung upside down while naked and spanked on the butt never became a widely practiced tradition. I understand that there are places in the larger cities where you can get that treatment if you want, though I have no personal knowledge of this myself.

This birthday was my 37th, which means I have another three years before I reach that age commonly known as “The Big Four-O.” The “O” stands for “Ominous.” It’s all downhill from here, bubba.

In the grand scheme of things, forty is the day of the hump of life.

Forty is the age when your friends and co-workers come up to you and say wonderfully warm things like, “Your life is half over!” and “You really look great for someone your age!”

Thanks dear friends. Thank you.

They decorate your office with black streamers and black balloons and give you black flowers and a black coffee mug that says “Older Than Dirt” on one side and “Excuse me while I rot” on the other. They put a black birthday hat on your head (the elastic band fits nicely under your double chin) and stuff a black noisemaker in your mouth and expect you to smile and act funny as they mock your mortality.

That’s when you realize that attending your own fortieth birthday party is a lot like attending your own funeral. The only difference is that funeral food is usually better.

As you struggle to blow out the forty black candles quickly reaching bonfire status on your black cake, you hope there isn’t a seventy-year-old stripper waiting in the wings.

Then it’s time for the obligatory singing of “Happy Birthday To You,” done in the style of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” by a bunch of well-meaning idiots who couldn’t carry a tune in a paper bag.

And all the time you’re thinking, “Where did I leave my AK47?”

It is a documented fact that most disgruntled postal workers become disgruntled soon after their fortieth birthday. It’s not hard to figure out why.

As always, I tried to keep this birthday a secret. I didn’t want anyone congratulating me on my “big day,” not my coworkers, not my close friends, and certainly not those damn singing waiters on TGIFridays. I embarrass myself enough during the course of a normal day. I do not need help.

There was a party waiting for me when I got home (I have no control over what goes on there). It was a quiet affair, just my wife and kids and my dog ​​(the cat had a prior engagement). There were streamers and balloons hanging around the dining room, and the table was perfectly set with paper plates and plastic forks, courtesy of my nine-year-old daughter who imagines herself to be the Martha Stewart of high school.

My youngest insisted that we all wear Barney and Baby Bop birthday hats while eating our birthday bucket of chicken. Fortunately, my wife forgot to buy film for the camera. A thirty-seven-year-old man in a Barney birthday hat with chicken grease running down his chin doesn’t exactly qualify as a Kodak moment.

Unless, of course, you’re sitting in a red Miata.