Present Birthday

I have always had an odd relationship with birthdays. That is, they've never carried much of an impact; while I occasionally have birthday parties, they are as likely to occur in November or March as they are on my actual day of birth, assuming I celebrate at all. Whether by result or happenstance, I often face great difficulty in remembering how old I am, and I am commonly known to ask for today's date and calculate backward with the help of the documentation on my driver's licence. During the autumn months of 1997, I went about telling people that I was sixteen and it was 1998, neither of which was the case. For the past three years, I have dated everything 2000.

My temporal discombobulation aside, I am generally caught flat-footed when friends and relatives ask what I would like for a gift. By and large, there have been few things that I have wanted that I haven't simply bought for myself, and those that I haven't seem absurdly frivolous. (Val is shrewd enough to find these things anyway, which is why we look upon her with an expression of reverence, but in this her experience is a dramatic exception.)

On the contrary, this year is different than most. As I'm sure I have mentioned, I'm breathtakingly impoverished. To be sure, I am quite comfortable -- my parents have generously paid for my auto insurance, and my job includes free room and board. Although my income is meager, I can easily afford movie tickets and decent meals at pleasant restauraunts, tickets to Don Giovanni, and keep enough to save for a plane ticket. Books and videos I can borrow from friends and libraries. I am not a materialist; if I wasn't happy, I would change jobs.

However, this unique situation puts me in a position to quantify my desires -- not so that I can ask things of people, (yes, I have trouble asking for things,) but so I can see what I value. "Value" perhaps is the wrong word, as it seems more that these are my luxuries -- things I would like but would never buy for myself, (not when the money could be put to much better use).

This is the list:

-leather pants
-lingere
-good tweezers
-embroidery floss
-dental and gynecological appointments
-sheet music
-cunning eyeshadow, a shimmery pale blue
-paid lj
-Shadowrun, 3rd edition
-good alcohol
-piano repair and tuning (the sustain pedal misses the low e)
-to be taken out to a very nice restauraunt by someone whose company I enjoy.

Looking back on the list, I feel like a strange literary character; I almost want to cry at how incredible it would be to have any of the things on that list, and yet how they seem so impossibly fine that I'd feel false to buy them. It's odd; I think to anyone else they would be small, even miniscule. Tweezers? Embroidery floss? They cost almost nothing, but I cannot concience the expense when I so easily make do without.

How is it that one makes distinctions between "want" and "need"?