You know what is a real hassle - not knowing when your birthday is. People start sounding really suss when you are talking to them on the phone.
Last night I finally got round to phoning up to get my academic history. When I say finally I mean I did it before and sent them to my mum but she put them "in a safe place". I want to go back to school and maybe even finish something this time, instead of just changing my mind all the time. So in order to do this I need all the paperwork of pretty much everything I have studied formally before.
The problem with the birth dates is that during my schooling years I have used 4 different ones. It makes it tricky knowing what to say I tell you. Actually I haven't really thought about this for ages cause it just hasn't come up lately. The first it crossed my mind was when the lady said stuff like "I'm having trouble finding you, could it be another birth date" (it is hard to describe the tone really in which someone says this to you). In this case I had given my real birthday not even thinking about it - but then when I rang the next one I gave one of the fake ones when I'd changed it back to the real at some stage (which is odd cause I know I enrolled with a different one - this time to make myself 2 years older as there was an age restriction on the course). It can get confusing.
I think I may have gone into how this all started before somehow but will repeat just cause I feel like it. When I was a young nipper both my folks worked in their own business for pretty long hours. As such I went to childcare pretty early and my kindergarden teacher said I would be bored repeating it again (now some less charitable souls could have other motives on their minds but I assure you I was a model pupil - ha ha). So like a number of others in those days my parents moved my birthday forward to February to beat the cut off date for school entry.
So thats two. But then one year (and I remember it which is unusual), in fact the only year I did not have a birthday cake but instead a caramel tart, I made a big fuss saying it was my birthday and despite denying it for a while my folks cracked in the end. Not wanting to admit they had been wrong we celebrated it a day earlier from then on and I was too young to know the difference.
So thats three. Many years later I wanted to study social welfare but I had to be over 21 which at that time I was sadly not. No problem just jack the age up and to the annoyance of my sister she had just been supplanted as the eldest. Which makes it four.
It has made me a bit funny about birthdays and my family don't understand why I want to make a "fuss" about the other ones. They say it's not "real" but it feels like the birthday of my childhood.
I only found out about my "real" birthday when I was 11. I was looking through my parents stuff and found my birth certificate. I had to promise not to tell - which I broke immediately to tell my best friend Jane (who to this day has problems remembering the real one). I celebrated it in February til I turned 18. It was like closing the door on my childhood. Not that I don't still celebrate but it is not the same when everyone else doesn't hold it in the same esteem.
ros from URL @ 2:32 pm
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