Burning the candle

You know what's really good about living in a foreign country?
Birthdays! I absolutely hate birthdays. Mine as well as others, but mostly mine.
When you live in a different country, you not only rid your family members of the terrible task of buying you some nonsense thing that you don't need, but you also get rid of that task yourself.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love giving things to the people I like, it's not that, it's just the eternal problem of what do you give to the man who has everything?
I'm not saying that I do, but I know that if there's anything out there that I want (and that is reasonably priced), I buy it. I know that the rest of my family and my friends are the exact same way. Things that fall outside my range of reasonably priced wouldn't fit in that range for your family members anyway, so it comes down to trying to find something that is both acceptably expensive and that will also be liked by the recipient.
When I was 7 years old, this posed absolutely no problem what so ever. Now that I'm 28 going on 29 (I shiver at the very thought), this has become an insurmountably complex problem. It's even worse when it comes to parents.
Also, when your family members aren't around, you can conveniently forget your birthday. That way you don't have to acknowledge the fact that you're not getting any younger, and the years only get shorter and shorter.
All in all it's a win-win situation for everybody.

I'll make you all a deal right here. If you promise to conveniently forget about my birthday, I'll promise to forget about yours, and we'll all live happily ever after in blissful ignorance...