Today is January 16th.

January 16th is my birthday.

Not a single one of my friends has wished me a birthday, with any form of preceding emotion.

Even if they had phoned my house and said, “Hey, Jordan, have a God awful birthday. I hope you fall into a hole and die!” it would have been sufficient. At least, I would have known they had remembered my birthday. Now, I feel neglected and unloved.

The meter has rolled over. I’m 18 now. An age of voting, and driving, and etc. An age where the world is my oyster provided I have something to crack it open with.

Unfortunately, I am not partial to shellfish.

It is hard to believe that only 7 hours remain in today, and my friends have not even hinted that we will do anything as a group. When Binkle’s birthday rolled in back in July, we had a party with cakes and movies and stuff. For mine, I’ve spent most of the day sitting at my house waiting for my phone to ring, or for my computer to beep incessentally.

Many of you probably find this incredibly stupid. You’re probably sitting at home by your desktops thinking, why doesn’t he just call them up? Well, that’s because I shouldn’t have to. On your birthday, you aren’t supposed to phone people and say, “Hey, I was born today. Have you anything to say to me?”

No. It’s not like that.

I’m not supposed to prompt them. It isn’t my job to hold up cue cards in front of their face, or have the teleprompter on repeat until they get it right. That’s foolishness.

The worst part is, I know they forgot. It’s not that they know and are just avoiding me. They forgot. A few days ago, we were all sitting down to lunch, and Amy asked me, “Jordan, your birthday is coming up, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like…the 21st, or something. Right?”

This is when Binkle chimed in with,

“No. It’s on the 18th.”

Naturally, they were both wrong. My two friends had descended down to the level of apes and were trying, in vain, to create fire from a piece of rubber and a grain of sand. I’m sure that, in no time, they would develop the wheel out of a paper bag.

Since both of them were wrong, and I was too irritated to tell them when my birthday really was, they resorted to a strange and contorted new low. They stole my wallet, because within it was my Driver’s License.

They had to steal from me to know my birthday.

Shameful.

I wasn’t as pissed off at Binkle. I know he’s absent-minded. He can hardly remember his own phone number. But Amy…Amy was different.

Amy was a person I had cared about once, and she had cared about me. Now, we had degraded to the standing where she couldn’t remember my birthday. I remembered hers. Vividly. January 27th, 1988, she was brought into the world. According to her, I was brought into the world on January 21st, 1987. Maybe she doesn’t even know the year. Maybe, in her eyes, I’m a child of the sixties.

It makes me shudder to think of how they could forget my birthday.

Recently, at the request of Dean, I have been playing Resident Evil 2. It is a good game. Ridiculously short (I beat it twice in one day), but gripping nontheless.

Don’t get me wrong. The graphics are terrible. And I find it difficult to believe that all citizens of Raccoon City wear the same attire. But, I guess that’s the way games were before the new millenium rolled around. We certainly were behind on the times.

Soon, I will move on to Resident Evil 3. I am hoping Capcom didn’t cheapen the gameplay. I already know Jill Valentine isn’t garbed in proper Zombie hunting clothes. Apparently, you can battle an army of T-Virus junkies in simply your shortest mini-skirt and a tube top.

Good for her.

My writing is continuing at a sluggish rate. Every chapter trickles like molasses towards completion.

I’m also reading Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle was truly a brilliant writer. If you haven’t read his stuff already, then I suggest you promptly find a copy of The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It is a gripping read.

Anyway, goodbye to one and all for now. I must be off, to finish a chemistry lab. If any of you have knowledge of solutions and solubility, as well as Ksp values, feel free to contact me.

Granite