belated. a funny thing about birthdays is that you'll always get the "happy belated birthdays." which are coming from people wishing you a happy birthday late, thus belated. but these are usually received in conjunction with a "i'm sorry, i remembered but, i was away, i thought about you..."



and this is funny because just the mere fact that someone wishes you a happy birthday, belated or not, is cool enough. but something in the human psyche makes you attach a reason or an excuse to a "belated." as if by missing the actual date it's not as happy or real of a birthday wish.



i catch my ass doing this all the time. doing all these same things, providing the reason for a late birthday wish or whatever it might be. it's one of those socially accepted and possibly automatic things that we do -- an action that verges almost on the unconscious -- simply because if we miss something, we are usually wanting to have a good reason for it. or to at least provide a plausible reason for missing something. i think it's a remnant of going through twelve years of attendance based education. it's like when you first go to college and start missing classes, you say all sorts of shit to the professor about how or why you missed class. after a few semesters however, i found that i tended to just go "i missed class, i was late, what do i need to catch up on?" without using any particular reason unless one was provoked or requested. then again, maybe i just learned to cut to the chase because after you miss a few weeks of class at a time, no excuse is really gonna cut it so you might as well come clean and not bullshit. there's a lesson to be learned here i'm sure, about the intrinsic value of not bullshitting. but it's probably lost on me like most other good things are.



anyway, back to the belated birthdays thing. i think birthday wishes really all mean the same thing, whether they come on the exact date or not. free meals and desserts however, must usually be redeemed on the exact day, so be sure to remember your birthday exactly and go out for free stuff appropriately.