It is common for kids in America to have big, elaborate<\/u> birthday parties. They invite lots of their classmates to a bowling alley, a rock climbing gym or their house, and they have pizza and ice cream cake and open lots of presents. At least, that is what my friends and I did when I was growing up. That is, until I was about 11 years old and I decided I had had enough<\/u>. <\/p>\n
I told my parents not to give me any presents. I told my friends to stop wishing me a happy birthday. I refused to tell anyone when my birthday was. It was all a little over the top<\/u> but in my opinion, celebrating, and making other people celebrate, your birthday was the height of<\/u> arrogance. How can a person celebrate himself or herself? And every year, too! <\/p>\n
It had occurred to me that if a birthday were to be celebrated, it should be done by giving presents to one\u2019s mother, expressing gratitude to her and wishing her a happy \u201cgiving birth\u201d day. I didn\u2019t do that, of course, because I was a teenager who never expressed gratitude, but I stand by<\/u> the theory.<\/p>\n
As the years passed with no birthdays, it stopped being a big deal<\/u> for me. Even though I still don\u2019t celebrate (or reveal) my birthday, I think I have more of an appreciation for all the rest of the days of the year. Therefore, my official policy is that pizza and presents are welcome any time.<\/p>\n
Emily <\/p>\n
<\/br>
\nVocabulary<\/b><\/p>\n
elaborate (adj.) ? made or done with great care or with much detail
\nto have had enough (idiom) ? to be tired of a situation and to want no more of it
\nover the top (adj.) ? more than what is normal or necessary
\nthe height of (idiom) ? the highest level of (something)
\nstand by (phr. v) ? to continue to support or believe in an idea
\na big deal (n phr.) ? very important<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is common for kids in America to have big, elaborate birthday parties. They invite lots of their classmates to a bowl\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":11591,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}