So They Say It's Your Birthday

On Friday, October 6th, 1867 thousands of Alaskans went to sleep that night. When they eventually woke up, the date was Friday, October 18th. What happened so that the whole territory fell asleep and woke up twelve days later? Were they in some sort of time warp? Abducted by aliens and had their memories wiped clean? Was it a giant Rip Van Winkle sort of thing? Did they all do a mini-hibernation?

Look again. Friday the 6th to Friday the 18th. Naturally, from one week to the next there should be seven days. But this was an exception. There were twelve days in between Fridays. Last time I checked a week only had seven days.

What happened was that Alaska underwent a change from Russian control to American control. The US and much of the rest of the world used the calendar that we all know and love today called the Gregorian calendar (named after 16th century Pope Gregory). The Russians used the older Julian calendar (from the times of Julius Caesar). The calendar the Russians used had too many leap years—because in Russia, years leap you—hence the need to jump forward a dozen days or so.

So the United States decided that to bump the calendar up a few days so that people went to bed on Friday the 6th and woke the next morning being Friday the 18th. (They also changed time zones and moved to the other side of the international dateline.). My thought every time I hear that little historical anecdote is, “Man. Sucks for the people who missed their birthdays.”

For people that missed their birthdays, they just had to wait a whole year for the day to come around again for a chance to celebrate. Just like that. All because some government bureaucrats decided you were using the wrong calendar.

Some people can't fathom missing out on their birthday. Many that have young kids can't fathom missing their kids' birthdays, even though he is only turning two and will have no recollection of that particular memory and will have more fun playing with the boxes the presents came in than with the actual presents.

Others can't even fathom what a birthday would be like because they don't really know when theirs is. It's not necessarily by any fault of their own but just because their birthday is truly unknown. For some of the kids here, when they come to the orphanage they have so little documentation that we just have to pick a date and guess a year and give them a birthday. Others are the opposite, in which we have documentation, records of birth previous school enrollment, but they may have conflicting information, and not just maybe the difference of a couple of months (the difference between say, a hospital record of birth and filing for a birth certificate).

There are some kids here who know their birthday and it's not a big deal, others who know it and want everyone to knot it. But there's also another group of kids that doesn't know—not because of being to young or having conflicting information—because it's not a vital statistic that's been memorized.

That is precisely the reason I have so much fun surprised them for the birthday. There is no better surprise than when you have absolutely no idea to expect anything. I only surprise the ones that don't their birthday is coming. When they show up in the dinner line sometimes its a piece of cake, a plate of cookies, or a liter of pop (talk about haywired kids!). This is usually accompanied by a big “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” from me and then people just spontaneously singing happy birthday and then a room of people trying the give them their birthday spanking. Unadulterated mayhem.

After the kid comes down from the sugar high, they usually come up to thank me, but really they have a more important question to ask. The first is, “Is it really my birthday.” The second thing they say after I affirm what is maybe a completely arbitrary day chosen to mark the turning of time is, “Cool. So...how old am I?”