I have to confess that I spent many years cursing the day of my birth – correction – date of my birth – cursing the date of my birth. It all started with a simple grammar school assignment. The teacher instructed everyone in my class to find out what was in the news on the day that we were born, and then report those headlines back to the group. This very intriguing task required that I take a trip to the intimidatingly large library at the nearby university. Once there I was directed to sit in front of a very strange looking contraption. After getting situated, and being shown by a very helpful librarian how the whole crazy gizmo worked, I began my schoolboy sleuthing by scrolling ever so stealthily through something called microfiche. Neato.
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I searched back through the previous decade and finally landed on the day in question – November 21st, 1963 – my birthday. I scanned the unremarkable glowing columns of front-page fodder on that particular date in history, and the only item that appeared to be of any significance at all was a mention of President John F. Kennedy traveling to Dallas. The story really only caught my attention because it was focused on one of the few U.S. presidents that my public school education had managed to teach me a little a something about. I made some notes and jotted down a few brief details about an additional story or two, but it was JFK’s upcoming itinerary, for better or for worse, that seemed to be the most noteworthy. Before turning off the machine, however, I decided to scroll just a little bit further – to November 22nd, 1963 – one day after my birthday. And there it was. In the largest font I had ever seen. “Kennedy Slain.”
In that moment, I remember wishing that I had been born just one day later. I fantasized how it might feel to be the kid at Calahan Elementary with the biggest headlines. I imagined that my classmates would have to regard me differently somehow. Undoubtedly my prepubescent persona would suddenly be imbued with an undeniable grade school gravitas simply because I had something so intimately in common with one of the darkest days in American History. In addition, I assumed that my previously unremarkable position in the playground’s pecking order would be vastly improved, if I could just walk back into that classroom with the assassination of a president neatly tucked into my Pee-Chee Portfolio. Unfortunately, however, it was not the case. I was born one day too early, and my report to the class about the news on the date of my birth turned out to be far from extraordinary.
Disappointment in my mother’s swiftly dilating cervix, and the belief that the entire trajectory of my life’s path might have been positively altered if my birth had been slightly delayed, were reinforced to me years later. I was working at a video store in my mid-twenties; a low paying job that offered reliable hours, medical benefits, and the entire VHS library of I Love Lucy available for free viewing whenever I wanted or needed. One evening a very good-looking young man walked into the store with an attractive young lady on his arm, and asked if he could open an account. I handed him a pen and a new customer form, and asked him for a credit card and his I.D. I glanced down at the driver’s license he had provided me, and following DOB – there it was – 11-22-1963.
“Wow,” I said, “We have almost the exact same birthday.”
“Really?” He replied, without looking up from the paperwork he was now busily filling out.
“Yeah, I was born on November 21st.” And then I clarified, “Also 1963.”
At that point the young man looked up at me and smiled broadly before confidently declaring, “I was born on the day JFK was killed.” His perfect teeth were brilliantly white.
“I know,” I said, managing to conceal my less than flawless grill.
To this day, I still have very crowded lower teeth and a slightly protruding, sharp incisor on the upper right that painfully punctures the inside of my upper lip every now and then if I chew too quickly or carelessly. I am fairly sure that at this point his beautiful girlfriend giggled, and then planted a prideful kiss on his deliciously dimpled cheek. Why wouldn’t she? In any case, he handed me back his completed form before they proceeded into the store to find the perfect date movie. I remember thinking – as I watched them browsing and canoodling – that could be me: handsome, straight, confident, and a credit card that’s not declined. That could be me, if only I had been born twenty-four hours later. Instead, I had quit college to work full-time at a dead-end, retail job to be sure that I was armed with health insurance in the event that my HIV blossomed into full-blown AIDS.
One last sigh of self-pity.
Now, as I reconsider the subject, it occurs to me that I may have actually been born on the best possible date imaginable. Today, if I was asked to give a short report on what was in the news on the date of my birth, it might simply go something like this…
On November 22nd, 1963, shots were fired in Dallas, Texas that shattered the collective heart of a still innocent nation. On that tragic day, the world changed forever. Thanks to my mother’s swiftly dilating cervix, however, I arrived just one day prior – on November 21st – the last baby born in Camelot.
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