In the past week, I’ve known three people who have celebrated birthdays and all three of them celebrated in different ways. My brother, Cole, who turned 16 on the 25^th, celebrated by going to the movies and seeing the most successful movie of the summer, Suicide Squad, the week it came out and accepted the fact that he didn’t have to pay as his gift. My friend Abbi (hello Abbi!) celebrated by attending the first day of her sophomore year of college, which is inarguably much less fun than seeing a movie. My other friend Aaron celebrated by going to the capitol city and spending a day surrounded by friends and family doing whatever it is he wanted to do. However, now that all of that is out of the way, we’re here to discuss birthdays.

The celebrations of birthdays are the most interesting part of birthdays to me. They vary so much as some people do what my brothers and friends do, which is typically not much, and some people have My Super Sweet 16-ish parties every single year and spend insane amounts of money on something they won’t remember in 20 years. I personally don’t remember having many birthday parties as a kid. I think the most cliché party I had was probably when I was around eight or nine and we went all out. Bounce house, cotton candy machine, the works. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget my father being covered up to his elbow in pink, stringy cotton candy. At the time, I didn’t realize the struggle that he was having as I looked high to the sky, watching partly made cotton candy hit the side of my house and laughed, probably running high on sugar.

However, after that, I had a party when I was 16. We rented out an empty building and myself and 30 of my closest friends danced the cold, January night away. I was turning 16 and that was my most recent party and probably my last until my 21^st. People typically tend to go all out when they turn 21, but looking forward as a 19-year-old, all I can see is myself and my friends sitting around and doing what we do best, watching Friends and talking. That’s the idea that makes me happy.

I’m not trying to make a new, intriguing point on birthdays. I just needed to talk about something that’s been very present in my life throughout literally my whole life and especially in the last week. Feel free to let me know what you do to celebrate your birthdays on Twitter. I’m wanting to learn. That’s the point of life at 19.