You say Happy Birthday, I say I hate you.

(A prose on how the swine flu contributed to ruining all birthdays)
The only thing that can ruin a perfectly good birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese is being dragged out of the ball pit to have a bunch of strangers (and possibly a weirdo dressed in some freaky costume) sing happy birthday while you look in terror over the five foot long sheet cake that you and your family will be eating for the next month. This is only second to then being told that 26 is too old to have a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Bullshit.

The birthday song might be the most horrible moment of the year for me. Now that I am an adult my parents get on speaker phone together and sing it, and to mock the tradition now my brother and sister in law do the same, and in veritably at least one friend a year tries the stunt…I hang up on them. And now, no doubt, the three people that read this crap will call me this year and sing. That means that this year I might have to suffer through 5 minutes of birthday song. The only thing worse than having to watch a group of people unenthusiastically sing this melody is being dragged to the front of the monthly office birthday party by some overzealous birthday fanatic that wants you to lead the group in song. As the sad faces ponder getting a year older, their wretched job, and the weird growth on their back the only thing that gives them hope is that someone anteed up for a ice cream cake this month. No luck. Worst. Day. Ever.

This couldn’t possible get any worse right? Wrong, we forgot about the swine flu. Apparently splashing some water on my hands no long constitutes ‘a proper hand washing’ due to the outbreak of this flu virus and now I need to wash with soap for 30 seconds, or as long as it takes to sing the Happy Birthday song. Shit, you are kidding. Now every time I go to wash some jerk is humming the damn song next to me. Even worse than singing the song is a tone deaf hummed version of the crap, God forbid someone tries to whistle it. The topper is that last week I was ranting about this to someone and they informed me that it is actually TWICE through the song for a proper hand wash. Forget it. I would rather get the swine flu than have to listen to this song one more time. Or please, John Tesh or David Hasselhoff write something better.