I was fourteen and my mom was taking me to the DMV to get my restricted driver’s license. I was giddy. FINALLY, I was going to get to drive… legally. I was a farm (well, rural) kid. I’d already been behind the wheel of a car or two.
Mom had fished my birth certificate from her closet of important papers for the big event. I was examining it line by line, savoring the details and considering my origins. I finally hit upon the "date of birth" blank.
Me (with caution and disbelief): Mom? When is my birthday?
Mom: May 31st.
Me (with obvious angst): So why does my birth certificate say May 30?
I had somehow always expected there had been something fishey about my birth. This was my evidence. I had been left on the doorstep. Or possibly just dropped off behind the barn as my brother liked to tell me.
My mother's explanation – after she got over her disbelief and denial – was that the hospital had made a mistake. Obviously the nurse had come to work on Saturday, May 30, and since I was born shortly after midnight, she had forgotten that the date had changed. Plausible excuse.
Mom’s "proof" that I had not been suffering from that 4th Child Syndrome (also known as they-were-so-preoccupied-as-parents-they-couldn’t-even-remember-your-birthday syndrome) was this: The Wagner Family reunion is always the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. Dad had taken the other three (who have no discrepancies regarding their dates of birth) and gone to the family reunion the morning after my birth. That’s where the big announcement was made. That’s where everybody found out about me.
May 31st was indeed a Sunday in 1970, so the whole reunion theory could be correct.
Anyway, as devastating as this news was to me in 1984, I recovered. Now I just use it as an excuse to start celebrating my birthday one day early, and I spread the celebrating to two days long.
Cool place to find out what happened on the day you were born:
2 comments:
This sounds very much like a plot point that should be exploited in a future novel. How could having one's birthday off by a day wreak the most havoc in one's life?
I went to school with a girl who had a similar experience, except her family had the YEAR wrong. It was tragic she had been adopted and the information was wrong. She had been held back a year in school (failed) and then found out she was older than they thought so it made her a 19 year old sophomore. She took the GED when she realized that she would be 21 when she was a senior!!
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