G is for Garrison

I never understood why you receive gifts for your birthday. In fact, I don't see why people make very big deals in general for your birthday. There are only 365 days in a year and over 7 billion people in the world. So, when you think about it, you share the same day you were born with roughly 20million other people. Yet, we praise people for doing absolutely nothing to come into this world. You actually do worse than nothing coming into this world. You scream and cry and inflict pain on your procreator for extensive amounts of time, and yet your family and friends celebrate those moments for the rest of your life as if you're some champion, some conqueror of worlds for doing absolutely nothing.

If it were up to me, I would say you would have to give back on your day of birth. One day a year, at least, for a chance to repay the people in your life that have had to put up with you. A day to show the people in your life that you were born to better the world we live in. Maybe life wouldn't suck as much if people did this. Maybe I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if the world we lived in actually gave a rip for me. But it's too late for that because it's my birthday, and I'm giving the world what it has asked for since the dawn of my very existence. Today I'm going to better the world in a way that I have deemed worthy on a grand scale.

I wake up to the sound of my alarm just like any other day of the year. Except today is special, today is my 17th birthday. I wake up and stare at the ceiling for what seems an eternity. I try to picture the ridges on my ceiling as snowcapped mountains I will one day explore. Frigid ice caps that only few are brave enough to climb for fear of freezing to death. Maybe one day I could have been a great explorer. I could have been in the history books as the youngest man to climb Mount Everest or discovered some unexplored island where all the dinosaurs live. And just as my daydreams start to get good my second alarm goes off, my daydream alarm, which throws me back into real life. The life where I'm not an explorer, but the one where I'm a high school recluse.

I wish myself a happy birthday because like any other day, my parents had to get up early for work so I am home alone like every morning nowadays. I don't see my parents much anymore, most of our communication is now through notes left on the fridge or texts sent from mostly dormant phones. Most of them telling me what chores need to be done, none of which contain any sort of "happy birthdays". But this does not faze me. I did not expect anything from them, how could you expect something from people who barely exist, or barely know you do.

My morning routine is different this morning then most mornings. For one, I am ironing my favorite pair of cargo pants. It's my birthday, and I want to go out with a bang, so, why not look at least as fancy as I can. They are black cargo pants with about a million pockets. The pockets are extremely hard to iron since there are so many of them, but I wouldn't want to wear pants with any less. The pockets are my favorite part of the pants. See, in normal pants you can't carry as much as you can in cargo pants. I think a lot of people discredit cargo pants of their usefulness. I use certain pockets for certain things: one is used for pencils and pens, one is for trash if I'm not next to a trash can, of course on it used for my phone, and one is used for random stuff I find throughout the day and think is worth keeping. I don't really use the back pockets for much other than my wallet and random, slim assortments. I have thought about labeling my pants pockets but I don't think this would benefit anyone other than myself, plus I already know what each pocket is used for so I normally choose not to.

It is also a different morning because I am using my favorite shampoo and body wash. I have to use it sparingly because the company that sold it went out of business and no other shampoo/body wash smells quite the same. Granted, I have 13 bottles of each because when I heard the news about the company's failure to stay alive I stocked up on all the department store had, I still have to use it sparingly. But since today is a special occasion, and after today I won't have much use for these cleaners, I don't try to ration them as much as I usually would.