My Birthday Week

I have friends who love to countdown to their birthdays. In early August, I received probably 7 missed calls and frantic text messages from my sister that said "call me!" all in one day. With knots in my stomach thinking something bad had happened I call her back immediately to become relieved and annoyed to hear "Guess what?!? It's only (x) days until my birthday! EEK!" I have another friend, Tricia, who starts the countdown to her birthday at approximately 364 days.

I had a teacher in high school (favorite teacher ever) who always gave us neat projects to do and one was to make a poster of the events of your birthday week. Without a doubt, my presentation was the most devastating of the class. And ever since that assignment, I cannot forget these events. (I looked up these events to get links, but I promise you I still remembered this stuff from the 11th grade!) Instead of a countdown, it's almost like a mourning period for historic events leading up to the day of my birth.

• April 14th- The day President Lincoln was assassinated.
• April 15th- Aside from being tax day, this day is the one uplifting story of my week-- this day marks the day when the color barrier was broken when Jackie Robinson played his first game in Major League baseball.
• April 16th- The Virginia Tech massacre happened  in 2007- 32 teachers and students are were murdered that day. (This did happen after my high school project, bit it fit with the story so I added it in!)
• April 17th- The day in 1815 a volcano erupted killing 80,000 in Indonesia. 
• April 18th- The day of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906- an estimate of 30,000 buildings destroyed and 3,000 killed.
• April 19th- The day Timothy McVeigh decided to bomb the The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, 1995.
• April 20th- In 1945, Hitler celebrated his 56th birthday hanging 20 Russian POWs and 20 Jewish children. In more recent news, this marks the day of the Columbine high school massacre.
• April 21st- No catastrophic news for the day, so my day is full of celebrating me!

That's 83,254 notable deaths in history just in this week of the year. See, I told you it was a depressing countdown!

I share a birthday with Tony Danza, but that's as interesting as it gets. I did find out just today that on the exact day of my birth the Footloose album took over as the number one album- replacing Michael Jackson's Thriller. Maybe this can explains my lack of appreciation for his music. I'd much rather listen to Footloose than MJ anyday.