"Do you do anything special for birthdays?"

What did we used to do to celebrate birthdays before our culture became a giant satire of itself? Perhaps in the old days when we all owned one pair of shoes that we only wore to church and walked around barefoot the rest of the time the birthday was something that passed without much incident, or maybe we would get a reprieve from having to milk the cow. If we were among the elite we may have a ball thrown in our honour and a boar would be roasted, musicians assembled while we minuet the night away like some Jane Austen story, ladies gathered around the Waterford crystal punchbowl giggling elegantly. Oh, and we would give the peasants the day off.

And what about now, in modern times? How do we commemorate the anniversary of the birth of our friends and family? If we really want to show them the depth of our esteem we will stop at a grocery store and get a cake off the shelf. It will be either yellow cake that tastes like freezer burn and plastic or chocolate cake that tastes like freezer burn and chicory. It will be frosted with stuff that came from a bag of powder that was re hydrated and coloured with food dyes that have been banned in most European countries (what do they know about science, stupid Europeans) and tastes like cotton candy and methamphetamine. If you're lucky you will be able to get the lady in the bakery to personalise it for you. If you're really lucky, none of her seething hatred about her subsistence wages and lack of a decent company insurance plan will be psychically telegraphed into the cake and curse you and all your friends that eat it. And don't forget the candles!

But there's something even worse than that paltry scenario.Yes, it's the restaurant birthday. That is the absolute nadir of the birthday repertoire, the lamest of the lame. These idiots get so excited about it and aren't ashamed to show it. When you go to greet a table and one of them gets that mischievous twinkle in their eye, you know what's coming. But just like a bad dream, you can't get away. "Do you do anything special for birthdays?" they enquire with a girlish giggle.

Here's what you want to say, what your soul is screaming to reply but like in the nightmare the words just won't come out:

 "Oh sure, we are forced, like literally forced to go and draft several other employees to drop what they're doing, no matter how busy and come over here to you, a party of complete strangers that we now despise to atonally and listlessly recite a trite and disingenuous litany that contains empty words of goodwill when in fact we would love nothing more than for all of you to drop dead right now."

"Great! Do you have cake?"  

Why would you want to broadcast to an entire restaurant of people the fact that you are such a pathetic friend/relative/spouse that you were too lazy to stop at the Wal Mart bakery and now have to demand a free slice of stale tasteless cake at a chain restaurant? You are making a spectacle of someone that tradition dictates you should be celebrating. It only makes sense if the birthday boy/girl is under ten years old, and if they are, that makes you an even bigger pile of shit for dragging them out for dinner when if you had any class you would throw them an actual party at home, or rent out the Champagne Room at Chuck E Cheese. Are we supposed to drag out a pony, all arrayed in equine finery for them to ride around the restaurant?

"It's a living."

 Perhaps some balloon animals

That is EXACTLY what it looks like

...or this guy?

"You have to sleep sometime!"

This video says it all:

I.F.H. MONDAY'S from Nick Swardson