What follows is a reworking of a blog post I did on my birthday four years ago. I was 43 then. I'm 47 now. Early forties to late forties, just that fast! Or is the entire span mid-40s? Hmmm. . .
But it really doesn't sound so bad. I can still (barely) play the doubling game, where you figure out how old you'll be at twice your age: 94. Not entirely likely, but not impossible either. I could get there. Grandpa Greenlee made it to 92 and only expired because he wanted to, I'm convinced. Grandma Greenlee got all the way to 94, though a good portion of her marbles didn't, sadly. The maternal grandparents only got to 67 and 79, so taking an average drops the number to 83, which doesn't sound so bad. And hey, most of my friends and co-workers are older than me, and The Other Half will be 52 this year so 47 sounds just fine.
April 19th isn't a particularly happy day in history, despite its meaning to me. Here are just a few of the bad and/or very serious things that happened on my birthday:
- 1775: "The shot heard 'round the world," the first shot of the American Revolutionary War fired. Sure, it ended up OK, but somebody was on the other end of that shot!
- 1927: Mae West sentenced to ten days in prison for indecency!
- 1961: Bay of Pigs invasion.
- 1989: 47 soldiers killed on USS Iowa.
- 1993: Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas is raided, then burns to the ground.
- 1995: Domestic terrorism of Oklahoma City bombing.
- 1997: Red River Flood in North Dakota.
- 2005: The previous Pope was named. He was creepy.
This week's unfortunate events in Boston, Mass. and West, Texas have preceded April 19th by a few days, and though they haven't officially been tied to any of the above, I've just got to wonder if there's a connection somehow.
- 1997: Red River Flood in North Dakota.
- 2005: The previous Pope was named. He was creepy.
This week's unfortunate events in Boston, Mass. and West, Texas have preceded April 19th by a few days, and though they haven't officially been tied to any of the above, I've just got to wonder if there's a connection somehow.
Then again, some good and/or interesting things happened on April 19th too:
- 1775: That American Revolutionary War thing turned out to be good, of course.
- 1892: First automobile driven in the United States.
- 1935: Actor Dudley Moore born.
- 1946: Actor/singer Tim Curry born.
- 1971: Charles Manson sentenced to death. . .so why is he still alive?
- 1987: The Simpsons debuts as a short, recurring cartoon within The Tracey Ullman Show (on my 21st birthday, and I was watching!).
- 2011: Fidel Castro resigned.
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| Yeah, so I might not be blogging very much today, dig? |
And did you know that my birthday is also: Bicycle Day, Venezuala's Independence Day, "Feast Day" of several Roman Catholic saints, and this sometimes it's Orthodox Easter! My birthday has occurred on ordinary Easter three times during my life, and never will again, unless I live to be 105. Fancy that!
Source for much of this frivolity: Wikipedia.org
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