Oh my God, how did this happen? Why am I 58 years old? This is unfair. I wasn't paying attention, and I missed the whole middle-age part. It's like I skipped that step and went from feeling young to feeling old, no warming period.

I'm officially an old man, and I didn't have time to prepare myself for it. I didn't even have a plan. I assumed that when it happened, I would just accept it. It's not that easy.

They say each birthday is an opportunity to take a look at your life.

Spoiler: it's not so fun when you're looking at your life through the rearview mirror.

I used to love my birthday. When I was a kid, I spent half the year counting the days until my next birthday. It was that wonderful day where I got all kinds of gifts and I was spoiled rotten. And there was going to be a cake! My family was really into making kids' birthdays special.

I remember once a friend from school came to my birthday, and he was very surprised at all the attention my family had put into it. He said that in his house, birthdays were just a day when some relatives said "Happy Birthday" to him, and that was it. He didn't even get gifts. I felt so sad for him. Back then I thought it was because he was poor, but my family was also poor (though culturally middle-class) It’s not like they spent a lot of money. It was about the gesture. They made it special with improvised things.

I remember my grandfather building a very elaborate piñata in the shape of a train for my sister's birthday. It even had sound effects. That thing took him weeks to build out of papier-mache and plaster. It had dolls inside as passengers. Then he installed the electric whistle from a toy train inside to make it sound like a real train. Imagine putting all that effort into something that’s going to be destroyed by kids in seconds. I must have been very young. It's one of my oldest memories. To this day, I have no idea why my sister’s birthday was railroad-themed. There was usually some kind of theme to the family parties. Once, we were all supposed to be Vikings and stay in character during dinner.

So anyway, birthdays were my favorite holiday of the year.

But not so much anymore. When you see life in front of you, every birthday feels like a promise of future opportunities. But when more than half of your life is already behind you, birthdays are only a reminder that I'm closer to the end than I am to the beginning.

So I don't want anyone to tell me "Happy Birthday"

Instead, tell me: does your family have any unusual or interesting birthday traditions?