My strange birthday

  My birthday is February 19, one of the strangest times of the year in which to be born. It is truly a dark hole on the calendar, so much so that George Carlin referred to the third week in February as one of “A Few Things I Like” in his book Brain Droppings . (Also on that list: “Guys who say ‘cock-a-roach,’” and “A permanently disfigured gun collector.”)

Even the holiday associated with it, President’s Day, is vague, amorphous, and little noted. I bet not two out of ten Americans could tell you which presidents are honored that day and why.

Here’s how unremarkable a time of year it is: Under a previous ownership of this newspaper, at each monthly staff meeting the publisher insisted on serving cake and giving a shoutout to all the staffers with birthdays in that month. For example, “Hey, here’s to John and Jane, our August birthday people! Yay, John and Jane!”

So check it out: Each February for three frickin’ years, everyone forgot my birthday. Seriously. Three years. I kid you not. Three years running, no cake for me, not a word, nothing.

The greenest sales rep would get a mention. The meekest part-time designer would get a mention. The longtime editor of the freakin’ paper? Bupkus, zip, nada, zilch.

You might be tempted to say, well, that’s because no one likes you, Jim. Which could easily be true. But if I were really that unpopular one would think I’d have been let go at some point, yes? Anyway, I prefer to blame the time of year, thank you very much.

I have met one other person who shares my birthday, the young son of a friend of mine. As far as I can tell, only two famous people were born on Feb. 19: Smokey Robinson and Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi. Interestingly, I was a big fan of the music of both those gentlemen long before I found out their birthday, so perhaps there’s something to the whole astrology thing.

Speaking of astrology, even that’s all murky and weirded out on my birthday. Feb. 19 falls exactly on the cusp of Aquarius and Pisces, and its sun sign actually shifts over time. For example, Feb. 19 is firmly in Pisces these days, but when I was born 43 years ago it was only in Pisces by — get this — eight hours. Literally, I’m a Pisces by eight hours.

Perhaps my birthday and its attendant isolation and weirdness explains why I’ve always felt like a man without a country, a voice in the wilderness, a contrarian without a cause.

Anyway, I enjoy my birthday even if no one else does. I regard it as a character-builder.

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