I was on vacation in Florida on Sunday for my birthday. I generally don't like to make a big deal of this yearly event so I didn't advertise the day to my friends. However, I had a discussion the day prior to the big day with moorewrites about my birthday and my favorite cake. BTW...I love chocolate cake with chocolate icing. YUM!
My weirdness about my birthday caused some uncomfortableness with my companions. We had spent the day dining out, shopping and having fun. We headed back to the house at 4:30 to change so we could go to the beach to ogle the multimillion dollar homes adjacent to it and to watch the sunset. When we got in the house NM requested that everyone go and get ready for the beach while she made the Sangria.
I said OK and I headed upstairs. I promptly returned five minutes later ready for some beach walking when moorewrites stopped me in the hall to comment on the painting. I thought it was odd but I gave her my opinion and then we headed into the kitchen. There stood NM and J carrying a platter of cake and singing Happy Birthday.
I was stunned and shocked. I felt like a deer in headlights and I said, "Please don't sing". All of that attention was making me very uncomfortable and I didn't know why. They started on the second verse and again I said, "Please stop singing". I didn't yell, but said it quietly with much seriousness. They stopped singing and the room got a bit awkward.
We recovered quickly and I thanked them for the cake. But why couldn't I just let them sing? They were trying to be nice and make me feel good. Why is it so hard for me to let other people do nice things for me? I now feel bad for creating the awkward situation and for not being able to accept their generosity. I wish I was better at handling these types of situations.
This made me think of the Happiness book that we read a couple months ago. We took a strength and weakness test and my 4th highest weakness was "Capacity to loved and be loved". I find that to be very telling and obviously something I need to work on.
OK...the next time someone tries to give me cake and sing Happy Birthday to me I will try really hard to let them.
3 comments:
I thought my distraction technique was brilliant. Your aversion to the birthday song was a bit odd, but mostly I was just glad we decided to give you the cake at the mansion, rather than at the restaurant or some other public place.
You are not the only one. Although I have never told anyone to stop
singing, I do cringe through it and wishing it was over. It is
embarrassing to me to listen to people sing to me. I don't know, its hard
to explain. Just know that you are not alone:) Do you remember Mindy
singing to anyone who had a birthday? She meant well, but I hated it.
Btw, my favorite cake has always been chocolate cake with chocolate icing!
LK
I am sure ems will tell you otherwise, but I'm actually of a divided mind about birthday attention as well. I don't mind it, but I find I've grown to prefer it at just the right level. One of the things I like about a birthday dinner is that in a reasonable group, the attention can't be on you the whole time: the group is usually big enough that there are always little conversations.
I am certain that a good bit of this comes from my childhood; not all of my birthdays were pleasant ones, and there were most certainly times where it was good not to have attention focused on you. Considering that I was even weaker in terms of capacity to love and be loved than you were, I'd say it's not a surprise that I can sympathize a bit with you ... yet I think that in private I wouldn't try to stop my friends from singing. (In public, well ... the server at Red Lobster asked me if I wanted her to round up some people to sing to me. I politely declined.)
Just consider it an opportunity for growth. We may not agree with how the author stated his points, but it may be possible that there is truth to them: the past need not dictate the future.
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