My birthday was great, until Tom Brady won

It’s quite fitting to my personality that I call my birthday “Katie Day.” Despite that the title might indicate otherwise, I’m not a narcissistic person.  I believe my birthday is a day to celebrate myself in the sense of celebrating the people I constantly surround myself with, and not just celebrating that I’m a year older. I take Katie Day to be about my friends and family more so than myself because, honestly, that’s who I am as a person. It’s also because I hate individualized attention and cringe when people sing Happy Birthday to me, but I digress. Granted, in more recent years, this celebration of myself has ended in a terrible headache the next morning and a little of self loathing (if you catch my drift), and I am always amazed who comes out with me because it’s people from all walks of my life. In addition to birthday festivities I’m always amazed about the love I get on social media, texts I get from numbers I haven’t seen on my screen in years, and so on and so forth. I would say my birthday this year was perfect, but that was before Tom Brady won the Super Bowl.

I can count the people I hate on one hand and Tom Brady is one of the five people. I do recognize his talent as an athlete and could support the claims that he is the “greatest of all time,” but he is a horrible role model. Without getting too deep into his personal life and uber ranty, if you are in a top position playing for one of the top teams in the NFL, it would be in your best interest to be inspirational to young kids. Tom Brady doesn’t exactly fit that bill. As a die hard Jets fan, I was obligated to root for the Falcons this Super Bowl Sunday, and my heart was truly broken when the results weren’t in my favor. Was it a birthday ruiner? Not at all, because I kind of anticipated it. Being down 20+ points and coming back to win is an impossible feat, but not for Tom Brady. Situations like that make me say that Tom Brady won the Super Bowl, not the Patriots. As much as I hate his guts, I have to applaud his challenging feat.

So how does Katie Day and Tom Brady winning correlate to a great birthday, you ask? It’s sort of a weird metaphor about turning 22. Like I mentioned, my birthday is more about friends and family than it is about myself. I was fortunate enough to spend gameday with my friends, and texted my family from afar. As much as the outcome I wanted didn’t come out, it still was an awesome situation. That’s sort of what it’s like getting older, especially getting older closer to “adulthood.” We all know life isn’t perfect, and sometimes you need your literal arch nemesis to win the Super Bowl on your birthday to realize that. To quote Taylor Swift, because I’m obligated to as a new 22 year old, “Everything will be alright if we keep dancing like we’re 22.” My birthday was great, and the rest of my year will be too, even if Tom Brady is still an awful human being.