EVEN APPS have features that pop up to remind the subscriber to greet someone on her birthday. Social groups have a birthday beagle tasked with unleashing a tide of greetings for the celebrant.
It’s considered a social slight to forget the birthday of someone close to you, or who considers herself so, say, a spouse. It is, after all, a matter of putting an alert on the phone to remind you on a marked day to send a two-worded text that can further be abbreviated to HB. Is that so hard to do, the offended one may well ask? Even bank clients and school alumni automatically get some kind of greeting on their special day. Sure, it looks like something spewed out by a computer app — may the sun shine on your back not on your face; but there it is.
Complicated relationships can make this simple social nicety fraught.
An undefined yet intimate entanglement that is fraying at the edges and punctuated with weekly banging of doors and huffy exits without finishing a drink may cross into that red-letter day before the meetings for coffee and shared showers are officially ended. What is one party, having loudly declared a vow of silence to do when the day arrives for sending the obligatory greeting? Does he send a self-pitying message — greetings on your natal day from someone whose love for you has long been unrequited? This is, after all, about the birthday girl and not the melodramatic and soon-to-be ex-mate. (Why is it always about you?) The better route here may be to just refrain from anything more than HB. Or simply let the day slide as a number on the calendar.
What about someone whose name appears with a birthday cake on the phone calendar but whose role in one’s life is very much over, even forgotten? Did he survive his last stroke?
There is no problem with Masters of the Universe (MOTU) types. They’re in everybody’s greet list and get inundated with long proverbs and excerpts from the Old Testament (the serpent’s head will be crushed by a woman). Do they even bother to acknowledge the greeting? They’re too busy for that, unless it is to inquire what the allusion is supposed to mean.
As a recipient of a greeting, never mind if routine, the birthday celebrant may be touched even by the thoughtfulness of an unknown number. Is it acceptable to inquire “who’s this”? Isn’t that insensitivity avoidable for one who should have registered in the sender ID? It’s best to just reply — thanks for remembering. The return message may surprise — so, when do you plan to pay me?
Social rituals like congratulations for some accomplishment, condolences for the bereaved, or birthday greetings tend to be couched in well-worn phrases, trite in their delivery. But the simple gesture of being remembered is a comfort in its simplicity and grace. It is a connection that preserves a friendship. Never mind if the greeter is not invited to the birthday party — I hope you got the invitation we sent out.
Still, forgetting a birthday, or, worse, remembering it and not sending out even a short text message, can unravel a fabric that binds two individuals.
Remembering birthdays entails more than a greeting. There is too the expected gift that comes with the day. But here the unwritten rule is that if there is no celebration one is invited to, the greeting will suffice.
Is it really such a big deal to mark birthdays and reap some social costs for ignoring them? There perhaps comes a time when birthdays become less of a milestone (another year of life) and more of a nasty reminder of a dreaded boarding announcement. At the age when the senior citizen discount card is disintegrating, a greeting may be viewed as a form of mocking.
Still, another year of celebration can only be a gift, with or without a greeting to accompany it. Having no birthdays to remember can only mean there are fewer alerts on the phone, maybe because many have been deleted for reasons of estrangement or the absence of the celebrant in this world.
When in doubt on the exact day or the possible reaction of the celebrant, it’s best to simply send a greeting and find out if the party will reply with a note of thanks or an irritated rejoinder — missent message?
Tony Samson is chairman and CEO of TOUCH xda
