I had woken up this morning to a notification from Facebook, telling me that today was my neighbour's birthday. He had planned to keep it a secret because he didn't have enough money on himself to entertain everyone, but then facebook snitched on him and when we realized what was really going on, we the guys had decided to come together and try to organize a little bit of celebration on his behalf.
After the whole thing was over, we had decided to go out for a bit to have some fun but he had stayed back probably because he had guests arriving and didn't want them not meeting him at home.
When we got back from the outing sometime around 6pm, I was so exhausted and just needed to sleep at least for the next three hours to kinda recharge myself before diving into work, but about fifteen minutes after I laid down on my bed, I heard a knock on my door, it was my neighbor.
Apparently his girlfriend had gotten him a cake and he needed us there to help him cut the cake and celebrate with him. So I got up, threw on some clothes and went over to his room. We said some prayers, sang some birthday songs and eventually cut the cake.
The moment we were done cutting the cake, I had gotten up to leave because I thought that was all but then I was told to wait because his girlfriend had gotten him a birthday gift. Now if you're wondering why I got up when I did, it wasn't because I needed to rest so bad that I just wanted to get to my room, it was because as a guy, I'm not used to us getting gifts for our birthdays, so I wasn't expecting that to be on the schedule, hence me getting up to leave.
Funny enough, as I sat there and watched him open the gift, I could tell he didn't know how to react to such gesture because he wasn't used to it either. It was a funny and yet sad thing to watch because it just goes to show you how much we've gotten used to not getting anything from anyone, to the extent where we don't know the right reaction to give when we do get stuff from people.
Which really isn't right if you ask me. Women and kids shouldn't be the only ones getting gifts and all the nice stuff, we should normalise gifting our fellow men and I'm talking to myself too because I didn't get him anything, not because I had no idea it was his birthday until that morning because even if I did, the gift part wouldn't have crossed my mind because my brain doesn't think of gifts when it's a guy involved.
It's sad if I'm being honest and we all need to do better.