Happy Birthday to You (wink)

A little fudging can score you a lot of free stuff online.

Apparently lying on the Internet gets you more than an awkward meeting with Chris Hansen. On the contrary, it can get you free ice cream. Is that irony? Probably not.

With the power of a few Google searches and an hour of spare time, I’ve come across six local restaurants that will give you free food if you simply provide a birthday and an e-mail address. Is today my birthday? It is, if I want free food. I’m only limited by the number of e-mail addresses I can create.

Anymore, especially since I’ve been old enough to be legally required to carry an ID, the age-old birthday tricks don’t work quite as easily. The days of my mom pretending to make a bathroom trip only to pull our server aside and request the regurgitated clap-along birthday song are over. And besides, why settle when I can just get a free meal via e-mail from Captain D’s, or a free appetizer from TGI Fridays?

It’s as simple as checking the website of my favorite restaurants to see if there’s some sort of e-club. If there’s not a reward for my birthday, they usually give at least some sort of coupon for signing up. Yes, this puts my name on an irritating mailing list, but that’s why I make multiple e-mail accounts. Some sites might take a day or so to respond, so patience is crucial.

The places I scored easy grub:
• Red Robin (redrobin.com)
• Sonic (sonic.com)
• TGI Fridays (tgifridays.com)
• Cold Stone Creamery (coldstonecreamery.com)
• Qdoba (qdoba.com)
• Captain D’s (captainds.com)

Admittedly, someone could have justifiable ethical problems with this. But in my opinion, lying about my birthday to get free coupons over the Internet is classy. I just tell myself the country is in a recession, so it’s balancing out somehow. Logical? No. But I don’t care. In fact, I think I might take a date to Cold Stone Creamery.

“Yeah baby, just get whatever you want.”

“I’ll have the Berry Trin—”

“Ice cream. You’ll have ice cream—and not in a waffle cone. That costs extra. And wish yourself a happy birthday.”