Happy Birthday

Today is my official, public coming out.  I am revealing that I was born on April 1st and my Mom was 39 years old when I was born.  The day I was born my brother was 16 and my sister was 13.  That makes me the “whoops” baby.  Later in life I joked with both my brother and sister that effectively I was an only child.  By the time I was old enough to remember them they were both in college.

When I tell people I was born on April 1st they ask – Really?  I generally respond – You think I’d make that up?

I grew up in a small town neighborhood on Lincoln Street.  Hard to get more middle glass than that.  My next door neighbor’s Dad was a butcher, across the street was a salesman and an electric line worker.  My best friend’s Dad worked for the city and farmed part time with his brothers.  All of the Mom’s in our neighborhood stayed at home to run the family, my Mom did too.

My parents enjoyed giving me birthday parties for both friends and family.  I have some great pictures of wearing a cowboy outfit, my first bike and other best in the whole world birthday presents.

All of my life I’ve had the disadvantage of being gullible and overly trusting.  Every year my friends pulled April fool’s jokes on me.  I never once figured it out before they pulled off the prank successfully.  It was all good fun and we all had a big laugh, even though inside I felt it was at my expense.

Later in life I researched how the day became known as April Fool’s Day.  It’s all about the calendar.  The original ancient calendar was the Julian calendar which celebrated New Year’s Day on April 1.  Pope Gregory for reasons unknown changed the date of New Year’s to January 1.  The Holy See degreed in 1582 that the world would use Pope Gregory’s calendar which we now call the Gregorian calendar.  Word traveled slowly in 1582.  Those who either refused to adopt the new calendar or didn’t know about the change were given fool’s errands on that day.

Gotch ya! Happy April Fool’s Day!  The whole calendar story is a hoax.  But I really was born on April 1st.