Just called to wish a friend a happy birthday, which got me thinking about this. I guess I know 11 birthdays, not counting my own.
My parents.
My two brothers (one’s my twin but I’ll still count it).
My wife.
My two kids.
Four close friends.
There’s a bunch of others where I know roughly when it is (including my grandparents and my wife’s parents) but I’d have to check a calendar to know the exact day of the month.
It strikes me that, at least in my case, it’s a pretty darn good metric for distinguishing the inner circle of people who I really care the most about. So, how many birthdays do you know? And do you feel the same, that these are the people who really matter to you?
I get fifteen without thinking about it too much - ETA 21 and counting.
Mostly you’re correct, but there’s a few outliers… my boss’s birthday is during the same week as my dad’s and uncle’s, otherwise it wouldn’t stick, same with my friends’ eldest daughter having her birthday three days before my daughter. There’s some that I’ve known for years but have grown apart from the celebrants.
It doesn’t help that the birthdays in my circle tend to fall in clusters. A clear month and then five people over a couple of weeks.
I’d say somewhere in the neighborhood of 50ish. My 3 sibs and their 2 spouses and 6 kids, my husband, his parents and his 6 sibs, 5 spouses and most of their 20 kids and probably a dozen or so friends.
I have a weird brain for things like dates. Once the date gets locked in it seems to stay there. If I add in anniversaries of all siblings and friends the number gets a little nuts.
I think it’s a combination of people who mean the most to me and the fact that I’ve always been the one in the family responsible for remembering most of the important stuff. My husband doesn’t remember any birthdays except for mine.
I am also good at remembering birthdays. I do it because… well it’s not astrology exactly… but people with close birthdays have tended to interact with me in similar ways. A dozen close friends born in November, three hopeless crushes born in January, five ex boyfriends born in March (between the five of them there are only two separate birthdays), and six irritating near-stalkers born in August (two share the same birthday).
I could probably list nearly a hundred off the top of my head.
Mine
Two parents
Three out of four siblings (sorry, sis)
Two nephews
One niece
Two close friends
One coworker ('cause it’s exactly three weeks before mine)
Another coworker’s son (Halloween)
Two former coworkers (Christmas)
I don’t know if those last three count, but if they do, that’s fifteen.
Easily over a hundred. My grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, several dozen friends, all the people I was in grade eight with (I have no idea why), nieces, nephews, my next door neighbour, celebrity birthdays (again, why?!!). These things just stick in my head.
On the other hand, I am no good with names and faces. There is something about my brain that does not like to match names and faces. That would be way more useful than the ridiculous way my brain will match names and dates and hold onto them for absolutely ever.
Metric fucktons. I have always been able to remember birthdays after having been told once. I remember the birthdays of people I went to elementary school with and haven’t seen in 25 years.
My recently-deceased mother’s, and by extension, Ronald Reagan’s (same day, different year).
Uncle (Independence day!).
Ex-wife (pure memory, no relation to anything else).
Ex-girlfriend (tax day).
Ex-friend and current FWB (the benefits there causing the friend to be an ex-friend); ex-friend’s birthday is the day before mine, the FWB the day after mine. All combined to make one awkward-as-hell combined birthday party one year.
I suck at remembering numbers. If I were to remember more birthdays, I’d end up forgetting phone numbers instead.
That said:
Mine
Both children (go, me!)
My husband
My only brother (but not my half-brother or half-sisters, but they all live out of the country anyway)
My parents (both are dead, so it doesn’t do me any good now)
My mother-in-law’s, since she had the good grace to be born exactly one month before my mom
I have to look at a calendar to recall the actual day for my father-in-law and brother-in-law, but I know to look at that calendar in early January and early May.
I also know my co-worker’s birthday, but that’s because she uses it as the code for the copier and the postage meter. And it’s the day before my mother’s.
Lots and lots. I remember the birthday of people I worked with 20 years ago. I remember my sister’s best friend’s sister’s birthday because it’s the same as my husband’s. I can think of 15 people I know with birthdays in August alone. Just good at remembering stuff like that.
D’oh! That makes five. I forgot about it, but I know Hitler’s birthday because the Columbine jerkoffs picked that date for their massacre, and by coincidence my father died that very same day of the massacre (in Texas and completely unrelated).
And I’m remembering two others now, an American and a Thai, both here in Thailand and whom I should have recalled before. So now I’m up to seven.
Off the top of my head - mine, my boyfriend’s, my brother’s, my mom’s.
Most of my relatives use the lunar calendar to celebrate their birthdays so I don’t bother trying to keep track. Also I suck at remembering numbers. I know the months of all my friends’ birthdays and generally when in the month they fall, but I’m hopeless with exact dates.
