Daily Dose of English 206
Birthdays
Daily Dose of English 206
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about birthdays, because today is my birthday. Well, the day that this episode is coming out is my birthday. I'm actually recording it a little bit beforehand, so I'm kind of cheating, but you know, it's fine. I've had my birthday before. It's nothing special. So I figured we talk a little bit about just birthdays in general. Might as well use this as like an excuse to just talk about what happens on birthdays in the US and give you a little bit of insight into how I celebrate my birthday and that kind of thing. So birthdays are a pretty big deal in the US, especially for younger kids. Once you're older, it kind of doesn't matter, but kids love to celebrate their birthday. And like, I can remember that when my birthday was coming up, when I was young, I would like get sick more often in like the end of the year. Cause yeah, it's getting colder in October, November, but also, Oh yeah, by the way, my birthday is October 23rd. If you're listening to this on a different day of the year, this episode comes out on my birthday. But it gets colder, but then also like you go back to school and then also all this excitement about birthdays and holidays and Halloween would make me get sick a lot more often. And so I was sick right around or on my birthday several times. And it's I'm trying to thought went somewhere, just vanished. But birthdays are a lot of fun as a kid, right? Because you get to have a party, you get to have your friends over, you get to have presents, so many different things about having a birthday, which is really exciting. And I definitely had I wouldn't say I had very big parties, but definitely we had people over, I had friends over. I think my parents also used it as a bit of an excuse to have like a party with their friends and that sort of thing. But it was frequently like connected to my school. I don't really remember when I was really young, but when I was sort of school age, like what, like third, fourth grade, That's when it would be like, okay, I have all your friends over, everybody comes over to the house, there's food, there's cake, there's some presents, that sort of thing. And it was always really fun because it's in like in a nice time of year where it's like you can still kind of be outside, but you also want to have like these inside. And so it was, I don't know, yeah, I guess I just remember it fondly, generally. I usually asked for Legos as a kid. Those are always top of my list for some kind of thing to get. I don't really remember what else. I never really got like video games or electronics really. I really can only think of like Legos. I'm sure there's plenty of other stuff. I don't know. And yeah, I don't have a ton of birthday memories necessarily, but something else about birthdays in the US is that it's also very common to have something in school. So often like the parents would like bring cookies or cake or cupcakes or something like that on the kid's birthday. And there'd be like a little bit of a break from a from class from school, because especially in like when there's smaller classes or like when you're younger, so like in high school, that doesn't really happen. Sorry, I've got to clarify that. But in elementary school and below, it's relatively common because the classes are usually just always together. And so there's only like 20 to 30 kids in a class. And so it's not like you're having that every single day. But like at a big high school, there's going to be somebody's birthday every single day. There's actually an interesting, is it theory or it's a thing in math or whatever, where like if you have 25 people in a room, the chances that two people share a birthday is like 99%. It is so common that at least two people share a birthday just because of the number of possibilities there are. It's like, yeah, there's going to be somebody that shares a birthday with even just 25 people. Um, and so I can actually remember a couple of people in my elementary class that shared a birthday, uh, because it was, uh, just mathematically inevitable. I think we had like two or three pairs of people that shared a birthday. Um, I think, I think it was like three. Yeah. Anyways. So yeah, it's very common to bring some snacks or some cupcakes or cookies or whatever for somebody's birthday. And at my school, at least the parents would also usually like talk a little bit to the class about the kid and like share something about them or whatever. Not always, but it was a sort of a fun little thing to do, especially when parents get to talk about their kid or whatever. But. Yeah, going into talking about my more recent birthdays. As an adult, your birthdays are really not that much fun. I've also always been a bit antisocial, so in the past, what, like 10 years? Not quite 10 years. Let's say eight or nine, or seven or eight years, let's say. Let's get there. My birthdays have been relatively quiet on average. I've had a couple of ones that I actually did something. But like last year, I just had a sort of a get together with some friends. We went to a cafe and we played a game. That was fun. That's the sort of thing that I really like. I think that's a great level of party where it's not really, nothing big. You're not like going somewhere. You're not staying out for six hours. You're not like cleaning up everything afterwards. It's actually what I'm doing next week. Or no, this weekend, because my birthday is the week after, but it just happens that everybody I know is going away, like they're going on vacation or something like that, right around my actual birthday. So we're doing it the weekend before, because it's also just easier to do stuff on the weekend. So we're gonna go to the cafe, we're gonna play some games, have some food, I'm gonna make a cake, and that's it, right? Nice and simple. I don't need gifts, I don't need much at all. But yeah, it's also pretty common in the US for people to not celebrate their birthday, especially when they're older. A lot of people are really unhappy or ashamed about aging or they don't want to and they don't want to have their birthday. And so they won't really do much. Plus like when you're like 51, like who cares? Like it's sort of like, okay, I don't really need to do anything. I'll just go out to dinner with my family and that's all, right? That's just, that's all I need for my birthday. It's a regular day that's like just a little bit special. There usually is some kind of gift giving, but like for when you get older like that. So even at my age, like I don't really expect any gifts from anybody except for family. So like my parents and grandma, because I don't even want gifts from anybody else. Occasionally, some family might give you a little bit of money or something, but it's very different from when you're a kid or when you're... Even when you're in high school, you might have a party and some friends will bring something like a book or a cool thing or a memory or something like that. But it's definitely more common to get gifts as an adult during Christmas time or the equivalent, depending on what kind of holidays you celebrate. And so I actually this year I asked my friends, I asked them, it's like, if you can help me find a board game that I'm looking for, that's way more than enough of a gift. I don't really want you to buy the thing for me, but if you can be like, hey, I found this game, it's this much, I can get it for you. Be like, oh my God, thank you so much. I didn't want to look, I didn't want to spend all the time. That would be an amazing gift. I also know friends that work in game stores, which is why I asked for that, or else it would be a little bit weird. But yeah, that's an example of something that a lot of people would love, like a helpful thing where somebody says, hey, I'll clean your house. They'd be like, oh yeah, please, or whatever it might be. Some people do also like host the party for somebody else. That's also a relatively common party or gift. So like the birthday person doesn't have to do anything. They just get to show up. I've done that for people before. And it's actually kind of fun when you plan somebody else's birthday. It's just like you just get to it's they just get to show up, but you just have to do the thing right. Everybody else is going to have fun. Maybe that's just fun for me, but I found it enjoyable. Plus, it's not really a gift that you can get in a store, and so it ends up almost being more valuable than being given a physical object that you're like, okay, this is cool, but I could have bought this, I have a job, but I couldn't have thrown a party like this, thank you so much, that's awesome. So, yeah, I'm starting to ramble. I wanted to say something else about birthday parties, but I kind of forgot. So I'm gonna just wrap it up here for now. I hope that you enjoyed this. If today's also your birthday, let me know down in the comments below, or I'd also be curious to hear what kinds of things that you do for your birthday. And yeah, that's everything for today. I'll see you again tomorrow for a brand new episode. Have a great rest of your day. Have a great rest of my birthday. Bye.
For email updates, subscribe to my blog via email or RSS feed.