A baby, when born, celebrates his or her first birthday. However, what he or she receives in return is a zero. At no other time in one's life is there such a stagnation of movement on the numerical scales. i would like it to receiving your first paycheck for your first job. You-and everyone else, potentially a parent or a wife, looks over your shoulder as you try not to grin with delight. You pull back the licked seal to gaze upon the reward of your labor, only to find two zeroes in front and two zeroes behind-a zero-looking dot.
Therefore, I am considering calling this newest child one on his first birthday. It would very much mess with everything the rest of his life, causing him to become an expert at subtracting by one. But who knows if this simple act would not undo the ignominy placed on him by having 0 for his first birthday. Have you ever seen an 0 at one of those party stores? No. If the party stores (a later guest post will include a comment on the mystery behind and the brevity of life belonging to the Halloween party stores specifically) themselves do not recognize 0, should we continue to do so? I see two roads to take: a. reformation in the card and party stores
b. re-thinking and rehashing the dating of babies lives
To the nay-sayers who will say, 'but the child is not yet a year, you cannot call it one' - i understand. i have wrestled with the same inconsistency. where i have landed-the birthday does not have to correspond to the numeric age. This could be a brilliant marketing strategy-because it adds yet another day on the family calendar for which a gift is needed. If you are one who enjoys the custom of gift-giving and gift-receiving, this should present itself as a great boon to you. So Jayden becomes birthday July 2-3rd birthday, numeric age-not 3 until sometime in October, which could be nominally chosen by the parent. Look what we've just done, we've gone from one party to two parties, from one gift to two gifts (per giver/receiver)-and the list goes on-one invitation, to two invitations, one cake to two cakes. This one philisophical shift could be just what we've been looking for by way of economic stimulus.
Jordan Ogden
Age: 29
# of birthdays so far: 30
