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I was born on a Sunday (but not last Sunday, hoihoihoi). A number of years ago, I made my brother a calendar for Christmas.

My brother has no real idea when my birthday is. He can probably get the correct month, and maybe even get within a week of the correct date, but anything beyond that is a bridge (slightly) too far.

This trait is not unique to him, of course. I know what months my siblings were born in, and I can make a reasonable stab at the correct dates, but I’m fairly certain that I will be wrong and therefore err on the side of sending ‘belated’ cards well after the fact. That way, it doesn’t look like I am the kind of insensitive clod that doesn’t bother to remember the most important day of the sibling-in-question’s life; rather, it just looks like I am the kind of insensitive clod that can’t be bothered to get a card in the mail on time.

A handful of years ago, as the holiday season loomed nearer, I was perusing the online repository of Garfield comics and realized that a calendar of specific Garfield comics would be pretty nifty. And bespoke, which all the cool kids enjoy (or so I’m told)

So I downloaded all the online Garfield comics in existence that came out on my birthday, from 1978 to the then-present year. I next took apart an old calendar to see what months get printed on a page with which pictures (for instance, if your calendar has a front- and back-cover as well as a year-at-a-glance one-page calendar after the month of December, the picture for March goes with the calendar for November). I set about putting it all together in Word and Excel, printed the 11x17 pages and assembled a calendar where the pictures for every month were various Garfield comics that ran on my birthday.
This way he wouldn’t forget my birthday next year, you see. Very practical.

Now, I would have preferred to purchase this type of thing from Paws, Inc. The comics were surprisingly low res, and the whole thing was printed on regular printer paper (not cardstock or anything sturdy). But, needs must when the devil drives.

Of course, my brother didn’t hang the calendar up. I wasn’t too upset about that, though, because what a person does with a gift I give is not my problem. My responsibility ends when I give a gift that I think the gift receiver might like and/or is somewhat thoughtful and/or will cause the recipient to smile.

Had he hung the calendar up and used it, I might have made him another one for the next year. But he didn’t (ask me how I know), so I got him a Richard Simmons VHS tape the next year.
Does he have a VCR? No.
Does he need to lose weight? No.
Do I care? Also no.
A Richard Simmons VHS tape is very on-brand for me. By now, he should expect nothing less.