Birthday rules
Rule #1: select your parents well. Mine weren’t rich, nor especially happy, but they dealt fairly with their children.
Rule #2: pick your birth date carefully. Being a Valentine baby led to all sorts of embarrassment when I was young. My family would go out to dinner on my birthday, and my father would say to the waitress, “Look at the wonderful valentine my wife gave me [xx] years ago.” I would duck under the table at that point. On the other hand, it was great having a birthday that fell on a holiday that is celebrated with candy and chocolate, and I have the cavities to prove it!
Rule #3: pick your birth time carefully. I raced a blizzard and won, with my mother going into labor and arriving at the hospital before the storm hit. Ever since, I have had a special relationship with bad weather. I’ve had lightning strike within twenty feet of me without harming me. I’ve outraced a rainstorm on a bicycle near Angla on the island of Saaremaa in Estonia. These events definitely prove I’m special, but I’m not sure whether that’s “special” as in “fortunate,” or “special” as in “stupid.”
The windmills of Angla, with the storm fast approaching
Rule #4: Returning to the place of your birth is really overrated when it was in a hospital. It becomes even less appealing when the hospital is converted into a home for disturbed teenagers. Particularly when, as happened once in my early twenties, I was plagued with migraines and taking even more drugs than the teenagers were.
Rule #5: If there’s a person listed on Wikipedia for your birth date, but you’ve never heard of him or her, it’s like the date is still reserved for you to make it, eventually.
Sillyverse 
Happy [xx] Birthday, Brian!
It’s the xx-th most exciting one!
And I see a new chapter of E&A to be read! 🙂
Ha! I hope it was all that, and more. Yes — hope you enjoy chapter 12!
Happy Birthday Brian!! Its not so bad being born on a day when fat little cupids are running around aiming little well intentioned arrows!! I am a February baby too!! (Not V Day but I would not have minded!) Hope your day is a wonderful one!!
There were a number of years when I thought there was an arrow shortage, Judy. But I did have a wonderful day, arrow included.
That is so funny 🙂 Well done! Initially I thought you were joking…Wow, you are very special, in fortunate way, and the first or only person I know who’s born on Valentines Day! I felt something special around you, there you go 🙂
Happy Birthday Day on this Valentines Day!!
Holly
Sent from my Windows Phone ________________________________
Well, I did once work with people who would go into a restaurant and proclaim it was someone’s birthday when it was not. But, yes, it’s real. Oddly enough, just met someone from my home town with a Valentine’s Day birthday (though in a different year).
I’d add to no. 3 that you should pick your season of birth carefuly. I was born in the heat of summer, my least favorite season… Happy B/V day, dear B.!
Use your birthday as an excuse to demand air conditioning for the day! 🙂
I’m a summer baby and I love summer. But the downside was that I was never the kid in the class who brought cupcakes into school.
I suppose kids whose birthdays fall on holidays often feel much the same.
Happy Birthday and many returns. But the flags don’t fly on your special day; they do on mine. As a child my mother told me the flags were flying for me. No. It’s Prince Philip’s birthday, the Queen’s husband. Pooh!
Well, for SOME people they fly for you!
My mother missed having that experience: she was born on the same day as the Queen (one year earlier), but left Scotland before 1952.
The Queen, hey! Love it. 🙂
Happy Birthday, Brian
Yes, picking the right date is important. I goofed and chose April Fools Day. With five brothers, my birthdays always had an element of fear attached to them.
Enjoy the moment, knowing it is your day.
Suzy
Oh, dear! That is a tough one to live down. I hope your husband and daughters did not continue your brothers’ tradition of celebrating your birthday.
Hm, a novel view. I like it, made me chuckle, even if I wasn’t supposed to.
I particularly liked the taking more drugs than the troubled teenagers.
But, most enjoyable was the wikipedia, if no one you’ve heard of has your day, then it is yours to make, excellent point there to make one think of how to be memorable.
Glad you enjoyed it.
I learned about the drug dosage from a nurse who worked at the former hospital. She asked me what my doctor had prescribed for my headaches, and was shocked at the dosage level.
This time, next year, let’s check Wikipedia again for our names!
Deal! Hopefully one of us is on their way!
In looking at your blog, I see you’re into horror stories. You might take a peek at two stories on this blog:
“On Huckman Causeway,” a short horror story I wrote last Halloween, and
:The Dragon Lady of Stockbridge,” a novel-length story of a magician who gave up magic when she married, and has her past catch up with her in 1886.
If they fit your tastes, great! If not, my apologies for wasting your time.
I shall peek sometime after my goil has gone to sleep.
Thank you mucho for the point directionally.
I’m sure you’ll both make it there eventually!
Let’s hope it’s not for climbing a clock-tower, in a tu-tu, with a blow-gun.
I’m looking forward to checking out ‘On Huckman Causeway’ and ‘The Dragon Lady of Stockbridge’, giving up your magick for love… hard choice.
You do know the story of the German general who died while performing in a tu-tu for the Kaiser? His name was Graf von Hulsen-Haeseler and it happened in 1908. That’s why there’s a running animation to that effect in Monty Python.
Hope you enjoy the stories. For a shadow girl, probably my darkest female character so far is Martha from “Martha’s Children,” as chapter 2 this Friday will demonstrate.