‘They say it’s your birthday…well, happy birthday to you.’

And in this instance, they’d be correct.

It is my birthday today – thank you for remembering, Paul McCartney.

As this is the last important birthday I’ll have in quite some time, I figured I’d take a minute to reflect. Yes, I’m turning the big 2-1 today, and I must say, I’m quite excited about it. Usually, my birthday is a fun day, but nothing crazy.

I feel like I’m gaining access to some sort of secret club, which, I guess, on a literal level, is quite true. This is made worse by the fact that all of my friends and housemates are already 21. I relate it to video games, as I so often do other monumental events in life. Death being ‘Finish Him!’ from ‘Mortal Kombat,’ my Bar Mitzvah being… actually, I don’t know if I can think of a relevant video game scene or concept to equate to the rite of passage into manhood for a Jewish youth.

At any rate, just because this is a monumental birthday, it doesn’t mean the typical annoyances of the day won’t be there in full effect.

First, you always get a million cards, and, in some of them, no matter how hard you search the corners of the envelope, there’s nothing in them. Maybe it fell out? Come on, be real – it’s not like people oil up their cash before they send it.

I always struggle, at least internally, with what to do with the cards. Part of me feels like I shouldn’t throw them away, as if the people that sent them put tracking devices on the card so they can find out exactly when it hits garbage. Jewish and Italian guilt. It’s terrible.

The other part of me wants to throw them away the second I fail to see any dead presidents.

Worse than the card dilemma is the barrage of phone calls from cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents you haven’t heard from in ages. Fourth cousins twice removed, and all because they have that stupid birthday calendar on the wall.

The first question in the arsenal is always the same, and it’s never funny, nor is it ever clever.

‘So, how does it feel to be 21?’

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that, I might be able to fill up those empty cards.

I never know how to answer that question, no matter how old I am.

‘Well, to be honest, it’s a hell of a lot muskier than I imagined. But, other than that, just what I expected.’

If you have one of those caravan phone calls, your aunt is making every single cousin get on the phone. Pray to God you’re not that last one. Already, I’ve answered how it feels to be my age, what I’ve done today, what I’m doing tomorrow, that I’m going to be safe, what I’ve gotten as gifts. There really isn’t much left. One time, when I was this last cousin, I admitted I had nothing to say.

‘Hey, happy birthday. I’d ask you something, but I know it’s been asked already.’

And, you can tell they really don’t care.

‘Yeah, I got a gift card to Best Buy, two sweaters and tickets to a Knicks game, so that’s exciting.’

Yeah, exhilarating. Sometimes, I can sense their boredom (or hear it, through snores), so I just make stuff up.

‘Nope, haven’t gotten a thing. Parents forgot, and my house burnt down. How’s that for some luck?’

‘Yeah, great, I’m going to put your cousin on, be safe OK?’

Also, how many times does someone have to ask, ‘What do you want for your birthday’? This time of year, with Hanukkah and Christmas and my birthday, I’m asked this question approximately a thousand times. My answer, since I stopped wanting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figurines, has almost exclusively been, ‘I don’t know.’

My grandmother, for one, hates this response. She actually gets angry at me. Imagine that for a minute. Angry, at me, for not wanting anything.

Of course, I do want things – I just don’t want to tell anyone. There’s something about the surprise that I doubt I’ll ever get over. What fun is it to say to your parents, I want the new Lupe Fiasco album and then, a week later, in a thin, rectangular package, there it is. As if they were going to just look for that, on a hunch.

Despite my griping, birthdays are fun. People pretend like they care about you for a day. Your friends can’t be blatantly rude to you. It’s a great time, had by all. So, for the final time this calendar year, I leave you with Ray Charles’ jolly words: ‘Let’s have some fun, you only live but once, and when you’re dead, you’re done…so let the good times roll.’

Scott Spinelli will be in Schine Student Center from 1:30-2:30 p.m. Come and wish him happy birthday, he will have cake. Carvel cake.

Published on December 5, 2007 at 12:00 pm