“Help me,” she cried, “I’m drowning in the gelatin center of this birthday cake!”

You are probably a blogger or a Google searcher if you are reading this and you probably have a Facebook page as well. I’ve got one also. So what can go wrong with wishing someone happy birthday?

All Facebook users get notifications about the birthdays of the people who are their Facebook friends. I frequently see people making comments that using the birthday alerts is some kind of cheat or something stupid because it is so easy. I will openly confess I am a bit of a cynic but I find the dismissal of sending a greeting to somebody you may not know as well just because there is a notification as bordering on criticizing someone for doing something nice because it was easy.

Certainly I understand that some people are going to be insincere when they send that kind of birthday greeting but, more than likely, a lot of their more personal correspondence may suffer from the same complaint. On the other hand, some people may actually be glad to reach beyond the limitation of their own close acquaintances and send good wishes to people they would have been happy to be friends with if they could have had more time and closer ties.

The question here is about motivation, why are these people sending greetings, and some blanket dismissal of everybody who does so is neither accurate nor perhaps even appropriate. You can’t simply say smiles are stupid because some people smile insincerely. All I get from hearing such silly comments is that some people are high in cynicism and low in logic.

The headline for this little rant of mine was a metaphor for the girl that comes out of the cake in a fancy, staged birthday bash. Instead of the cake merely being a place to hide a girl who is supposed to surprise the birthday person, it actually has something sweet and gooey (sentimental) in it. So instead of jumping out, she is actually gets stuck in the stuff. I guess my question is really, which is more superficial, the gooey stuff inside the birthday greeting or the surprise appearance?

Anyway, I’m going to keep sending birthday greetings to everybody I get a notice about and I’m not going to listen to any sour people who would call me superficial for doing so. I think you should do so also. Go ahead, call me sentimental!