Hurray! July 4th is nearly upon us.
I love Independence Day: the parades, the flags, picnics and cook-outs and barbecues. I love that its the birthday of my country. I love Old Glory and the Star Spangled Banner and everything that means to me for my freedoms. As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the BEST holidays I celebrate.
But that’s too easy a topic…
Here’s Your Prompt: Choose your least favorite holiday and talk about what it means to experience it. Don’t cop out: don’t say, “I hate Christmas, so I stay home and avoid everyone.”
Write about a holiday you are forced to endure either through familial, religious, or some other pressure. Tell about a particularly horrible experience. What were your feelings? Describe through the senses everything that is WRONG about this holiday.
Do you hate Arbor Day because you were forced, as a boy scout, to plant 100 trees with your bare hands? Explain how much your hands were hurt and cramped at the end of the day. Describe the odor of the turned soil and the leaves and how it makes your stomach turn. Don’t leave out that to this day you can’t stand the sight of elms…
And, do as I say, not as I do: choose a really gut-wrenching holiday. Brownie points if you share in the comments below.
Birthdays. Mine and everyone else. Why do so many people think they are owed something for a birthday? There is never any way to satisfy someone who “has” to have a gift. I don’t like get “stuff” and I absolutly don’t want people to ask me what I want. If you have to ask, then you don’t know me enought to get me anything! So don’t! The perfect gift for me is something heartfelt and meaningful. It could be a book YOU like or a momento of a time or place. Usually something with no real value or hand mand. I HATE oweing someone a gift becasue they gave me something. Hey, I didn’t ASK for it.
Heaven forfend if you miss that special someone’s birthday. I don’t like to be reminded of mine so that’s why I have trouble remember yours! And don’t forget the last dozen gifts I went deep into dept were dismissed with a wave so I tried a more sentimental approach with equal results. Hell, if I’m going to end up in the doghouse anyway, why go to any trouble?
I know where my birthday loathing began- my family and elementary school. On birthdays they had this “game” where you get spanked on your birhtday. What is that?!? People get to HIT you on your birthday. Yea- real fun. And some sort of birthday pinch? What the hell is that? But family is the worse. The oozing of false sentimentality about your “special” day. Let see, relatives you don’t know are trying to hit you, asking you the STUPID question “do you feel any older?” – OF COURSE NOT, it is just like the day before, putting you in a sugar rush and then getting yelled at for acting like a kid on a sugar high. It is a no win situation.
As you become a teen you start to see the END OF THE ROAD. The end of high school and then what? What in the hell are you supposed to do then? One day is just like the last and every birthday you are getting closer to some important milestone. First you are 12 and don’t qualify for kid prices but your parents keep insisting you are “one child.” Huh? Just the other day you said I was “becomming a man.” Then you hit 16 and you can get your Drivers License. But you really can’t because your parents don’t want you to grow up. So as you turn 17 you have to endure all the crap from others your age who know you don’t have a license. Then there is the big ONE EIGHT -18. School is ending and you have no idea what the hell you are going to do and how to live. All through your teen years you are being yelled about growing up but no one will ever tell you how! Parents make fun of any attempt to be mature and prohibit you having real resonsibility but continue treat you as a child when you really need help in being an adult! ARGH! Every birthday just rehases all the problems there in getting older.
Bithdays always seem to be about the past. How old are you? Who the hell cares? Life is in me TODAY! I don’t care if I’m 43. I’m shooting to be well over 100, hell I consider myself as immortal today as I did when I was nine. Do you want to know the real answer, I DON’T CARE HOW OLD I AM and I don’t care about any of my birthdays.
Bithdays suck pure and simple.
Charlie! I never knew you felt this way! Sympathies, but here’s to many more birthdays…I hope you get past the 100 mark.
Hey, where are my brownie points? Besides, is that that birthdays are really bad. Its just that growing up is the problem. Peter Pan had it right. I just never want to grow up!