A Uniquely-Perfect 38th Birthday Celebration at Home in the Age of Coronavirus

I want to let all of you know that I am not just writing this blog entry after a drought of blog entries for quite some time. I am cranking it out in a frantic race to beat the clock. It has been a challenge finding a way to cram in many tasks throughout a typical Coronavirus, quarantine day. Please let me know if you have any typos because it is critical this blog is posted in real-time at the dusk of my birthday before twelve midnight.

As you know, birthdays mean the world to me considering that it is something that I look forward to all year long, and is perhaps the one Asperger's obsession the adult world has allowed me to hold onto without any consequences. Halloween and the Holiday Season have been casualties because every single year it becomes much harder to compete with the responsibilities of the adult world. On a birthday everything entirely about me, and I feel compelled to impose myself upon anyone who is in my universe. For me it is perfectly acceptable to take over the loudspeaker (with their permission beforehand) and announce to the entire agency of Living Resources, Inc. just how truly awesome I am and how important it is that everyone treats me like a Greek God all day long as I walk around with a ginormous balloon just like an overwrought child. Then to justify my flagrant lapse in professionalism I remind everybody that a lot of pastries have been set up in the Cafetorium, which is my way of reciprocating for the attention that I intent to receive. A birthday is truly my personal holiday from attempting to be a normal adult It is time to party and regress into childlike euphoria. There are times when circumstances force me to pretend to be more mature and adult-like than I feel on the inside. For example, if a paid speaking engagement has to take place on April 2nd, I will go through the motions and perform these duties to the greatest ability. But internally I am seething with disgust while wanting to say, "As much as I love being here at your organization, did you really HAVE TO choose April 2nd. There could have been so many other days of the year that would have worked better but you just chose the worst one out of three hundred-plus possibilities. Couldn't you just leave my birthday alone?" As much as I love sharing my birthday with World Autism Awareness Day, I always pray there will be no speaking engagements. Sometimes my prayers are answered and other times not.

Under normal circumstances I would be enraged at a ruined birthday and wonder why there can't be just one day of the year where things work out. It is true that so much time and energy is spent perseverating over this day just as any sensible person would do with a wedding or Bar Mitzvah. All birthdays are a big deal, which is why I create extremely long messages on Facebook to people I oftentimes barely know just to let people know that any person who has a birthday is at my beck and call all day long within reason. On this birthday I was not angry for having to spend it stuck at home with only social media as my interaction. In fact, it was nearly a perfect day for several reasons.

The amount of accolades that were received on this blessed day of days was plain overwhelming in every positive sense of the word. It was like Christmas morning or the eight consecutive days of Chanukah all rolled into one along with a schoolchild's snow day as a bonus. The fact is that things could have been much worse, and my "modified" birthday was not a conspiracy of constant bad luck that pounds me on this precious day over and over. It is reality for all of us who have had to swallow their anguish and do the right thing for humanity by canceling wedding, Bar Mitzvahs, and even burying their loved ones without any funeral services. It is a reality that we are all facing with a courageous front.

I am pleading with all of you to make a big deal about birthdays that fall around this Coronavirus pandemic in which someone is not able to enjoy themselves as they would under normal circumstances. We owe it to them and especially to the young children coming to terms with what may feel like the end of the world when they are told the roller skating party is going to have to be cancelled until further notice. Remind everybody that they certainly got screwed without shaming them with the cliche of how others have it worse. Just let them know we will all celebrate in the future as though this never happened. They will be given a Birthday Do-Over within time celebrated with four times as much tenacious energy, passion, and exhilaration as a typical birthday party. That is right. A birthday party that is not belated in its spirit because belated birthday sometimes feel like decaffeinated coffee as people merely go through the motions. We shan't go through the motions when it comes to reconnecting later on to celebrate each other's birthdays or just being together.

I am posting a photograph of my Carvel Ice Cream Cake that is all mine that will not be purloined by a single soul!