Day 317: Happy Birthday to…Everyone In My Life!

by Lara, lara@trippingonwords.com

I have been thinking a lot about birthdays these days. This is not only because I am breaking my way into my own 25th year, as of my birthday a month or so ago, but because everyone I know has birthdays in this particular season. Not a week goes by without my waking in the middle of the night with the anxiety-filled recollection that someone near and dear to me just marked another year that I probably forgot. And I don’t even have a lot of friends, so a lot of birthdays really does just point to clustering rather than anything more interesting like popularity.

Take tonight, for example. Two of my very best friends in the world had birthdays tonight. They are on different coasts, so I had but one party to attend, but they were happening simultaneously. Making this story much creepier is the fact that these two friends o’ mine were born at similar times in the same hospital in the same year. AND their last names are next to each other in the alphabet (K,L), so I am convinced that they probably chilled together as newborns and cried and passed germs back and forth and stuff. But it took little ol’ me until 7th grade to meet one of them, and until college on the other side of the country to meet the other when she moved into the freshman dormroom next to mine. Life is just crazy.

Or take our drawgroup from college. Of the eight of us, SIX have birthdays within about an eight week span from January through March. The other two—outliers/losers we will call them—are summertime babies. As a subset of this group, Claire and I fall exactly one week apart, and we kick off the yearly partying.

Weird coincidence the third has been mentioned before: Claire and Lara’s fathers have the same birthday. But different years.

Claire and I remarked upon this type of phenomenon frequently during our trip since we met something absurd like 6 people with our actual birthdays and quite a few more who fell within a week of our week.

I’m sorry people, but the coincidences are mounting up. I take this to mean a few things:

1. I am actually the center of my own little universe of perception, and everyone else is drawn to me by forces more powerful than my charming personality.
2. Perhaps there is something to astrology, and I am drawn to certain personality types.
3. I do not actually think birthdays are that important.

Number three may seem contradictory, but it’s true. Whatever powers have brought me together with all these birthday cousins, I do not feel they make the actual day any more important. I enjoy the parties, and the presents etc. but I’m not that into it as a whole. Though aging itself has yet to instill any fear in me.

However, number 3 is revoked for all younger people. Take my nephew John for instance. He has had only FOUR birthdays in his whole life. They are still very exciting. As you can see in the below clip. He has not eaten since breakfast at this point (we forgot all about it on the Big Day), is up way WAY past his bedtime, and is going on pure adrenaline. But look how happy (and muscular and graceful) the birthday boy is:



if you like what you see...check out these kids' blog at radiosetlaunch.blogspot.com