0004: Remember other people's birthdays.

I like to think I am pretty good about remembering people’s birthdays. In the Digital Age in which we live, remembering birthdays becomes less of a task and more of a daily habit. With the help of Facebook, whose little behind-the-scenes mongrels not only graciously send me a weekly email reminder, but also happily post a reminder on my homepage, I am instantly notified of upcoming birthdays for those with whom I am close, and even not so close.

Even with the ease of the Facebook birthday reminder emails and daily notifications, it is still easy to miss or forget someone’s special day. Some choose, for multiple reasons, not to post their birthdays, others use pretend birthdays to fool those identity thieves out there, and others, believe it or not, *gasp*, don’t have Facebook profiles (hard to believe, but yes, it’s true!). It is for these reasons I also keep a monthly calendar with birthdays of my favorites written in. Two examples of how this saved me:

1. Every year I always remember an old colleague’s birthday. We no longer work together, haven’t in almost five years now, but I continue to send him a birthday email, wishing him well. One year, I missed the birthday email, unintentionally, of course, but no email was sent, nonetheless. My good friend and former colleague called me out on it when I saw him next. He noted he really looks forward to the simple email wishing him a happy birthday. Never again will I forget.
2. A current colleague, at least for the next two and a half weeks, is new to Facebook and a bit skeptical of those aforementioned identity thieves. Not long ago I logged on to Facebook for my daily fix (ok, one of many daily fixes) and saw it was said colleague’s birthday. I, of course, Skyped her immediately to wish her a happy birthday. She laughed and then reminded me her birthday was in another 12 days. I looked up at my wall calendar and indeed (of course) she was right – it was there on my calendar, on the correct day.

So have social media networks taken over our lives? (I think we all know the answer to this one…) Do we rely more and more on what we see and read online (and on Facebook) than the newspaper, television news broadcasts, and our own personal calendars? And if so, it is socially acceptable to wish someone a happy birthday, or anything else for that matter, on such networks? And are birthdays often overlooked as insignificant if they are not milestone years or is it perfectly acceptable to make a stink about the day every time it comes around (as my BFF and I do)?

Birthdays come but once a year… make note and wish those in your life a fabulous day.

A special Happy Birthday to my favorite cripple, Lucas!



Note: In no way was intended to be a reminder that my birthday is indeed on the horizon. “Remember other people’s birthdays.” is in fact the fourth entry in the book.