At what age do we stop caring about our birthday? It’s my birthday today (Saturday), and I couldn’t care less. 

Most of us look back at our childhoods and remember how exciting it was when our birthday came around each year. It was a time to celebrate us! There were parties at home and parties at school. For one day each year, we were the most important person in the room.

It was exciting to receive birthday party invitations from our friends and even more exciting to hand them out. It was exciting to blow out the candles and see how many boyfriends or girlfriends we had. At 13, it was exciting to be an official teenager, and at 16 it was exciting to be old enough to get our driver’s license. 

It was exciting to turn 18 and officially be considered an adult, and for people my age, it was really exciting to turn 21 and be legally old enough to drink. (We all waited, right?)

After that? Not so exciting.

We try to keep the fun going. Your family might still sing to you, present you with a cake and presents, and maybe take you out to eat. But do we really care?

We have a tradition in our family that I do look forward to, however. Everyone knows the words to Happy Birthday, but that’s not what we sing. Instead, we sing what we call The Garfield Birthday Song. Never heard of it? If you’re not a huge Garfield the Cat fan like I am, you won’t have.

There used to be a cartoon on Saturday mornings called Garfield and Friends. In one of the episodes, one of the recurring characters, Binky the Clown, keeps showing up at Garfield’s door singing his version of the birthday song. It goes:

“Happy birthday, happy birthday, whoop de do! Whoop de do! Hope your day is pleasant, open up your present, just for you, just for you.” 

The problem is that it’s not actually Garfield’s birthday. I started singing this new version to my family on their birthdays, my Dad picked it up, and now it’s the only song we sing. (If you’re interested in hearing the song for yourself, you can find it on YouTube).

So, at what age do we stop being excited about our birthdays? Personally, I don’t care as long as I keep having them. But The Garfield Birthday Song helps.