Special dates

I admit it. For me, life is better when it’s organized. Once Adam and I announced that we were expecting a baby, people told me that I would never be organized again. And, yes, that made me sad. So, I decided to see if I could try to maintain my organiz-ed-ness once Addy was born. Some days are better than others, but so far, I think that I’ve been sucessful. (I guess this is a long intro to my actual blog, but my blog always has been ‘stream of consciousness’ to some extent in any case.)

Anyway, in my quest to be and stay organized, I have decided to rely on technology where I can. So, the other day, after Adam mentioning it several times over the past couple years, I decided that it would be much easier to enter all of the birthdays and anniversaries that we remember into Outlook as recurring events rather than keeping up with two different paper calendars (don’t ask me why they hadn’t been combined before!) which had to be redone year after year.

As I was entering everything into Outlook, I noticed that lots of important days clump together. For example in August, I have three friends with the same wedding anniversary date. There’s a week long stint in May that sees five anniversaries and three birthdays celebrated too. Adam has two friends that have wedding anniversaries on the same date in December. February 19th has not only Addy’s birthday but my Mom’s as well; also my aunt’s (though she and my Mom are twins, so that’s probably not all that unusual!), and also a friend from high school’s birthday too. More often than not, if there is one event on a specific day, there are two or more events. Of course there are several weeks throughout the year that are completely empty too. And that just doesn’t make sense to me.

If I remember correctly - if there are twelve people in a room, it’s more likely that two share a birthday than not. Out of 366 possibilities for birthdays, I just don’t understand how it’s likely to find a duplicate in twelve. This whole issue makes me think of the movie Identity, in which a group of strangers finds themselves stuck together in an old hotel. Soon after they start talking, they realize that they all have the same birthday. There is a dumb reason for it (which coincides with the dumb plot), but at least there’s a reason. And it makes sense, even though it’s dumb (can you tell that I’m not really a fan of the movie?) =)

Alas in real life, it just becomes a numbers game and people (like me) who are not numerically inclined are left to just have to accept that it happens. (I’ve written about probability and coincidences before and I’m still just as baffled by it all now). So, I’ll just stick to the idea that understanding things like this would just take the fun and mystery out of it and move on with life… though with an organized birthday and anniversary reminder system nonetheless.