All About HBDs.

Birthdays from my childhood are incomparable to any sophistication we have these days. Nowadays birthdays are bigger and they dig such holes in our wallets that we end up feeling like the entire economy has slowed down. To be honest, it actually slows down for us in the following months.

Not much long ago when I was a child, birthdays used to be really nice. The highlight being, one can’t get scolded on that day. As school uniforms were worn five days a week and the nuns made it mandatory even on weekend classes, our parents thought that dresses other than uniforms were a luxury. We got two new dresses each year, one for birthday and the other for Christmas (still there was no place in my wardrobe, which is a mystery). On my birthday, the happiness factor for me was that only I had the new dress (unlike Christmas when everyone has one). 

My Mom baked the cake always; I don’t remember a single time birthday cake was bought. Baking a cake is not a cakewalk, and the smell of homemade cake from the oven defined the real birthday atmosphere.  One could actually catch the scent from outside too. Despite our in-house differences, (sometimes we couldn’t stand each other so badly that it hurt to be in the same room) we all came together and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ as I cut the cake. 

That feeling. 

Nowadays birthdays are not bad either. Hundreds of wishes I get from Facebook, Whatsapp and the excitement of showing off the birthday dress. The little girl in me is still particular about the dress. Random people I don’t know much about wish me too. I want to be wished, I want people to like my pictures and all the people on my list to see where I checked in. That is the whole point of Facebook right?  According to the unwritten laws of Facebook etiquette, this is where normalcy ends.

HBD, my friend. Really...HBD...I mean it !  :D
Image Courtesy: Here

Then, people take this birthday thing to a whole other level. The thin line which separates normalcy from eccentricity is compromised.  They are the ones who type “HBD”. I want to talk to these people, like really.  Dude. How long does it take to type H-A-P-P-Y  B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y ? I mean, you are not Barack Obama. Or Narendra Modi, or anybody we know is extremely busy. There is no justification to typing ‘HBD’. For the uninitiated, HBD is nothing but ‘Happy Birthday’ according to the ‘Encyclopedia of imaginary jargons for jerks’. To be honest if someone said HBD to me on some other day I’d think it is something like HIV or H1N1. Just because it was seen on someone’s timeline on their birthday, I made this wild guess that it must be ‘Happy Birthday’.

So a happy anniversary is gonna be ‘HA’? And ‘Get well soon’ would be GWS? If I had a daughter and someone says ‘GWS’ to her when she is ill, I’d tell her ‘Sweetheart, this guy who said GWS. You should marry him’. When are GoodByes and Farewells going under the knife? 

You know Farewell could be just ‘F’ and that would be epic, considering how popular the alphabet 'F' is, in general.  

We have the luxury of being reminded about people’s birthdays. Let’s use it to make a person feel good. Don’t be a CJ.

P.S:- CJ – Complete Jerk.