Birthday traditions, old and new
I celebrated a birthday last Friday. It was unique in many ways, as I spent the day as a tourist in Chicago and then headed to a White Sox game in the evening. The ballgame tradition started when I turned 7 and continued through my teens. My sister Pam treated me to the game, which the Sox won. The postgame fireworks were even better than I'd remembered as a kid. I hadn't been to a game on my actual birthday in decades, though, since I moved West.
Another unique birthday happening was the dozens of greetings from friends across the country. These weren't delivered by a postal worker, but instead came through cyberspace. The bulk of them from many of my Facebook friends. Each time someone posts a message to my Facebook "wall," I get an e-mail that copies what's written and also contains a link to the place on the social networking site so I can view it in Web formatting.
I was able to keep up with the birthday greetings on my iPhone throughout the day. The first one came just after midnight on the East Coast from a friend in Maryland. The last ones came a few days after my actual birthday. How nice, I thought, to hear from so many people on the same day. Most of the folks who sent greetings are not day-to-day friends, but I keep them on my friends list because I want to keep in touch.
I got about twice as many electronic greetings this year as flowed in last year. It's a bit overwhelming, but in a good way. I admit that in the years before Facebook birthday greetings or other e-birthday cards I may have heard from just a small handful of these people. Some are former co-workers, so I'm sure I have their wit and wisdom captured on a group card in a box somewhere. Some are family members whom I see only sporadically, at reunions, weddings or funerals.
More than three-quarters of the birthday wishes fell into the "Happy Birthday. Have a great day"-style greetings. The more I got, the more I liked getting them. The most unusual came from a former co-worker, James, who is arguably a bigger geek than I am. His greeting read:
01001000 01100001 01110000 01110000 01111001 00100000 01000010 01101001 01110010 01110100 01101000 01100100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01000001 01101100 00100001
Translation: "Happy Birthday Al!"
I'm going to do better at extending birthday wishes through Facebook. I started today with my wife Diane's birthday. My friend Gretel also celebrates a birthday today.
Nothing wrong with cybergreetings. It just makes the snail mail variety even more special.
