Do you ever feel awkward when people sing happy birthday to you? I know I do. But now that birthday parties are being halted due to the C*********s, I think many of us are wishing we never took that “awkward” incident for granted.
Los Angeles resident, Hannah Chung, recently gave her fiance, Jason Shields, the birthday gift of a lifetime. Although she was unable to throw her partner of five years a big party to show her appreciation for him, she did something even more thoughtful.
While her fiance was kept occupied with online work, Chung handwrote 76 invitations, which she later slid underneath the doors of her neighbors’ apartment doors. The invitations included Chung’s request to have the residents open their windows at a specified date and time to sing happy birthday to her quarantined fiance.
The dozens of apartment residents got the memo and decided to partake in the birthday sing-along. Shields was completely shocked when Chung revealed his special birthday present!
Chung, on the other hand, was surprised that so many residents gladly participated. Just three weeks before Shields’s birthday, the couple had moved into the apartment. So, prior to asking neighbors to sing happy birthday to her fiance, the couple knew very few of the people they shared the complex with, making it a little weird to ask the neighbors to wish Shields’s a happy birthday.
But Chung feels like since she asked them to take part in her partner’s special day, they have a new connection with their fellow apartment residents.
“It was a great way to virtually meet a lot of our neighbors,” Chung said.
Chung also says that celebrating Shields’s birthday in this manner was a good way to “keep the excitement alive, even during a time [that she] can’t do anything.”
She has some great advice for those of us who may be planning on doing something special for a loved one’s birthday but aren’t sure how to approach it during self-isolation.
“I mean, the more you sit there and accept that you can’t do anything, [it doesn’t really help],” she said. “And there’s little things you can do without actually leaving your apartment.”
Besides having neighbors sing happy birthday from their windows, there are many other ways to make the birthday of someone you care about extra special during a moment like this. Baking them a cake from scratch, creating a large homemade card, or even binge-watching Netflix movies with them with a bowl of hot popcorn are all great ideas. It’s the thought and effort that counts, not how extravagant and expensive the birthday surprise might be.
Listen to Chung and her fiance talk more about Shields’s unique gift below.
