Go Daddy! Go Daddy! It’s Your Birthday!
The other night I came home, and while giving out hugs and tickles to my wife, and my five and three year old boys, my three year old started chanting, “Go Daddy! Go Daddy! It’s Your Birthday!” - Where does this stuff come from?

All right now, a lot of people ask me about my birthday, so here is the true “411”. I was born on November 23, 1965 – if you want to know my age, you can do the math. Personally, I don’t care about my age. I do however care about my birthday, or I should say, on the day that I celebrate my birthday. Now this can be a little confusing, so stick with me on this one.

First of all almost no one on Earth celebrates their birthday ON their birthday. You usually celebrate it on the weekend near your birthday. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I prefer to celebrate MY birthday on a different day from the exact anniversary of the date of my birth.

Now that I’ve helped to liberate your mind on the idea of celebrating your birthday on a different day, let’s talk about the entire month of November. It’s a terrible month. It’s dark, and getting darker. Everything is either dead or dying. The trees are bare; the grass is brown, its dark, cold, dreary, and depressing – yuck! It’s the first month of the year that you have to drive home from work with your headlights on. It’s usually the first month that you have to wear your heavy winter jacket. You wake up in the dark, and drive home in the dark.

The entire month should be stricken from the calendar.

Then, on top of that, if you are unfortunate enough to have a November birthday, your birthday gets lumped in with Thanksgiving. In 2001, my birthday is the day after Thanksgiving. Let me ask you this: Did you ever get to pick what you wanted to eat for dinner on YOUR birthday? How would you feel about having Turkey for your birthday dinner – every year for the rest of your life!? And what’s your favorite cake? You know, for your birthday cake. Do you like angle food cake; chocolate cake; pound cake? Good. We’re having Pumpkin Pie. Like it or not, your birthday is a national holiday, and the whole nation dictates how you’re going to celebrate it.

I know that right about now some of you are saying, “Well my birthday is in December, or the Fourth of July (or whatever), and you don’t hear me complain.” Well whoop de doo for you!! Go get your own rant page. This is about me, not you; it’s MY birthday!

Then there’s my other favorite: “This gift is for your birthday AND Christmas”. Well aren’t you the little cost saver? Does that mean you spent twice as much? Sure, every kid loves that one. So I guess I won’t open it until Christmas? No wait, I’ll open it now and be disappointed on Christmas. Gee, how are you supposed to handle that one?

So here’s what I did. I changed the date on which I celebrate my birthday. Now I didn’t just want to celebrate the weekend before Thanksgiving because that would still be in November. And my family is so large, that we’re not getting together twice in one month. And besides, as I have already stated, November is an awful month. That being said I now felt free to choose from the whole rest of the calendar to pick my new birthday.

Let me take a break here. This whole switching your birthday idea does not go without precedent. Way back when I worked at “Ed Z’s Family Funhouse and Food Emporium” in Wildwood I worked with an interesting cast of crazed characters. The sweet lady that ran the place was Rose B. Every year the old gals would get together one day in June and celebrate her birthday.

One summer I asked her the exact date of her birthday so that I could remember it for the next year. With a wink and a twinkle in her eye, she told me that her birthday was in the middle of the winter. They just celebrated it in the summer so that they would all be together. With that, the seed was planted. Now back to our regularly scheduled Rant!

Now obviously I didn’t want the winter months – all that darkness and death that I previously mentioned, plus I just hate the cold. The summer is too tough. No one wants to give up a weekend at the beach, and everyone is everywhere. Of course the fall is nice, but things ARE dying. Therefore the only place left is the spring.

At this point let me say this. If you are going to change your birthday, don’t just pick another date on the calendar. It’s like repainting your house and going from off-white to a different shade of off-white. Break the mold. You know you want your birthday to fall on a Friday, so pick a day, not a date.

So here I am. I want my birthday to be in the Spring, and I want it to be on a Friday. You see how this logic is working now right?? I chose my birthday to be the first Friday of Spring. Is that so hard?

This way I know that my birthday always falls on a Friday, and I know it is always in the Spring.

Again with the naysayers. I know what you are going to say.. “But its still pretty dark, and everything is still dead.” Not true, I say! The days have been getting longer since December 22, and everything is coming to life. It’s perfect; it’s flawless. I can’t understand why I just can’t get people to accept it. When your birthday falls on a Tuesday and we all go out to dinner on Saturday, you don’t hear me accusing you of trying to get two gifts.

But that’s how things are.. people are always trying to stick it to me!