Saturday, January 6

Weird thing number One

Yup, it's a virus going around. Devote a blog post to six weird things about oneself that haven't already been exposed to the blogworld. Some folks try to infect others by telling them to do the same. I have not gotten "tagged" as this deliberate infection process is called. I'm not sure if I would be participating in that case. Maybe I am too ornery or maybe I just think it looks cool to appear ornery. To be a little different, I'll draw things out a bit --- only one weird thing today:

I have a knack for remembering dates, especially birthdays. I could tell you the birthday of maybe 90% of all the people of whom I have ever heard their birthday. The 10% I forget? I have no idea why. And given a specific month, I could recall quite a few folks who were born in that month, but I might have forgotten details about them. Such as that Feb 12th is the birthday of this guy that I worked with one summer and briefly dated. During that summer. So we did not celebrate his birthday. His name? Who knows. OK, I did remember but it took some work to dig out of my memory. But just by thinking of February his birthday popped into my head without effort. Why was this so easy to retrieve from memory? Because it's also Abe Lincoln's birthday? Possibly. But he was no Abe Lincoln.

Sometimes I remember the month but not the specific day. Such as my ex-best friend from the high school years* who stole my boyfriend. Yup, even though we had already broken up she definitely stole him. The fact that she didn't get to keep him is one of the schadenfreude highlights of my life. I know she was born in the early part of August. I want to say it was August 8th, but that may be just because it's the day Nixon resigned.

I wouldn't have thought that this skill was that weird, but time and again I startle folks with it. If I know your birthday? Do not expect me to remember to send you a card or anything. Sorry. I am terrible about that.



*Kathleen, she didn't go to school with us. You wouldn't know her.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Joey's bday is august 8th. (So is his Uncle Steve's but I digress)... And our relative (also named Joe) whose name is on the Vietnam wall.

Emily amazed me by knowing my kids' bdays!

Cool weird fact about you. I look forward to reading the rest.
T

Kathleen said...

well... I remember maybe 50% of the birthdays and generally I remember - in sort of an Alzheimber kind of way - the people I knew earliest in my life. People do indeed find this date remembering thing very weird! :) And sometimes, it's other dates I remember, not just birthday, but dates are almost always involved and people are almost always freaked out!