Henrietta Hay's Column

The celebration of birthdays is an interesting phenomenon. Your birthday is one day in the year that is all yours. The other million or so people who are having one the same day don't really count. For small children, birthday celebrations are second only to Christmas. As the little kids turn into teenagers, the 16th, 18th and 21st birthdays acquire special significance as the day when they can at last do all those wonderful grown-up things - drive - drink - vote - get killed in a war. Then along come the "Big 3 oh" and the "Big 4 oh" and the "Big 5 oh" which seem to cause great anguish in some people. After that they cease to have a lot of importance to most of us. I do, however, find the black-rimmed novelties that say "over the hill" quite offensive.

Just today I learned that every day in America 5,500 people turn 65 and 30 people celebrate their 100th birthdays. That adds up to a lot of people becoming middle-aged and quite a few who can call themselves really old. My theory for many years was that middle age was ten years older than I was, but I have had to revise it. My kids are undeniably approaching middle age, so I fear that the theory is no longer valid for me.

I do find it hard to believe that 30 Americans become 100 every day. It is not a goal I ever aspired to, but if one were lucky enough to stay fairly healthy, I think being 100 would be a very interesting experience! You would be a celebrity. People would pay all sorts of attention to you and might listen to your tall tales. If you could still write your name they would think you were a genius. If you could still walk they'd enter you in the Olympics. They'd bring you stuff, but it's hard to know what it would be. It seems that half the people who reach 100 credit their longevity to complete abstinence from tobacco and booze, while the other half credit it to a cigar and a whiskey every day.

All this was brought on by the fact that I just had one - a birthday, that is. At my age it means very little except for "Boy, I'm glad I'm having it." It was, as always, a very pleasant day, what with time with friends, mail from distant places and phone calls from kids of various ages.

I said birthdays are very special for little kids, but I don't remember much about my early ones. Of course I remember the year it snowed when I got my roller skates. And I remember my 18th, when my dad produced a bottle of sparkling burgundy he had bought for the occasion just before Prohibition became the law, and had hidden for the thirteen intervening years. I didn't have to wait around for a birthday to be allowed to drive a car because we didn't have to be licensed in Colorado then. Or I don't think we did. I may get tripped up on this one.

Some people's birthdays become national events, but we don't take the actual celebration very seriously. I remember when we thought that George Washington was born on February 22 and Abraham Lincoln on February 12. Both days were national holidays and we used them to cure the February doldrums. But now we celebrate both of them on the third Monday in February, which is neither the 12th nor the 22nd, but gives us a three-day weekend. And we didn't even keep their names. It is now Presidents' Day without specifying which ones.

Martin Luther King's birthday has created quite a stir in various states. It is now a legal holiday on January 21, but Arizona refuses to recognize it and has thereby lost the 1993 Super Bowl, which was to have been played in Phoenix. And according to the World Almanac, in some states Martin Luther King Day is combined with Robert E. Lee Day, which strikes me as being very odd. So much for the birthdays of famous people.

Sometimes birthday celebrations aren't even for people. On May 1 New York's Empire State Building turned 60. King Kong was there for the birthday party, but he did not lift Fay Wray off the top of the building this time.

I'm really glad I had another birthday. It wasn't as exciting as getting roller skates or drinking a toast in thirteen-year-old illegal wine, or riding my motorcycle to work or going up in a balloon from the Library lawn. But I'm quite content. Like the reason for climbing mountains, it was there!