A Very Merry Un-Birthday to you, and you!

Today is Mickey Mouse’s birthday! Today I Learned this...

It’s also Winne The Pooh’s birthday – the willy-nilly, silly old bear is 90 today.

It’s also a good friend of mine, Sandra’s birthday too. Sandra isn’t on Steemit and isn’t likely to see this, but I’ll see her tomorrow and I can wish her Happy Birthday then.

How important is the Happy Birthday?

It used to be extremely important to me mainly because we didn’t get much by way of toys, treats or even sweets other than birthdays, Easter and Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t very poor, just poor enough that sweets weren’t taken for granted that we’d get them every day. An ice cream from the van was a special treat.

I had to save up my pocket money in order to eke it out to buy grandma a china rose (she loved flowers and the china ones lasted so much longer). I remember she still had the roses when she had to move out of her home and into a nursing home. I purchased those roses one by one over many Christmases and I was touched that she’d kept them.

I made my grandad shortbread because he loved that. My other grandad loved liquorice allsorts and a box of those wrapped up and given on Christmas day was received with an expression of delight – not sure if that was for show, but I didn’t think so then and I don’t think so now.

As I hit my mid and late teens, I met Trev (@s0u1) and I left school and started working. It was easier to buy gifts for Christmas and birthdays with all the money I earned back then, before the bills and mortgage payments started…

Now… presents and gifts are given as and when we see something and we think a person will like it. There’s often too little time left to exchange that perfect gift and we subscribe to the theory that ‘now is better than waiting for Christmas’ because, unfortunately, so many times, one last Christmas doesn’t get here fast enough…

My grandad, the one who loved liquorice allsorts… What I wouldn’t give to be able to give him one last box of those sweets he loved so much (just the blue and pink ones, they were his favourites).

If we see something that our son or daughter would adore, we buy it AND give it straight away. Our daughter bought me a cute coffee pot to set on my stove top. My birthday isn’t for a few weeks yet, but I’ve been enjoying fresh coffee every day for ages. I like this tradition we’ve started and spread through the family… it’s like having a surprise birthday when you’re not even expecting it.

So, Mickey, Winnie and Sandra, I hope you have a wonderful birthday today and I hope everyone else has equally wonderful Merry Un-Birthdays.

That Lewis Carrol… what a genius.

Images from pixabay

Dammit! I KNEW I'd forget... This post will go toward my Birthday gift experiment