404 Birthday not found.

 

I have come to accept that birthdays and I share a complicated relationship. I keep forgetting them. It’s not that I don’t care. I do! I just… don’t remember. My brain seems to have a filing system where birthdays go straight to the “temp folder” and auto-delete at midnight.

Facebook is my only lifeline. Now saying that aloud puts me in the baby boomer category. You gotta remember that I have a few buddies who are a few years younger than me and never waste a chance to call me 'Ammava'. (May their sambar taste like avial)

When Facebook kindly flashes a reminder, I spring into action like a responsible adult. There is this one guy I know who posts his own photo on Facebook, adorned by red roses, white doves, candles and announes 'today is my birthday!'. Mighty cringe but what a nice guy! He is a god-send for people like me. But more about that in another post, another time.

But if the birthday person decides to go stealth mode; no post, no status, no balloon emojis; then I am sorry! They are basically un-born as far as my memory is concerned. Hello Ravi Pannikkat, I hope you are reading this

Now, don’t get me wrong, I still remember my birthday; and maybe one or two others on a good day. I can recall exactly two phone numbers, too. Beyond that, it is all guesswork, mercury in retrograde and divine intervention.

My mind seems to have a very selective sense of importance: it can’t remember where I put my glasses, but it vividly remembers the time in grade one when I called my teacher “Mummy” in front of the whole class. That memory, unlike birthdays, has been lovingly laminated and preserved forever.

Some days I get up from my chair to do something; something important, I am sure; only to reach the next room with no clue why I am there. I stand in the doorway, baffled, as my brain quietly snickers and says, “You figure it out.”

So, while the moments and memories I want to keep play hide and seek, the ones I’d rather delete show up uninvited. Somewhere, I suspect, my brain has its own master plan; to function as a completely independent entity, a rogue operator making decisions without consulting me. And judging by how well it is hiding birthdays, it is doing an excellent job.

Hello readers, what important date did you forget off late?

Note: If any of you schmucks who are reading this, are going to blame it all on my assumed age, DON'T. I have your voodoo dolls and the first pin will go in where it hurts most.