Ode to a Birthday-or-A Birthday By Any Other Name

This post was never published and I was going to delete it and on second thought I decided to go ahead and post it.

January 18th use to be my birthday. This was true until shortly before my 16th birthday. Now of course it is on September 18th. How, might you ask, could this have ever happened? My dad's insurance agent convinced him that he should buy a small insurance policy on my brother and myself. In order to issue the policy, Social Security numbers needed to be listed. My parents applied for birth certificates for my brother and myself in order to obtain Social Security cards. Not long after that my parents were informed that there was no Elizabeth Luongo born on January 18th. My birthday was September 18th. Both of my adoptive parents swear that my mother told them in a meeting that my birthdate of January 18, 1951. They wrote it down and gave it to their attorney. So that year I missed a birthday and had to wait an extra nine months for my "sweet sixteen" birthday. There was an up side of course. Since I was adopted in March that was when I started school. Six and a half and just starting the first grade (now remember, they thought I was seven). I had to repeat that first year since I went less than three months. I turned 7 that next year just several weeks after school started ( remember again that they thought I was was 7 but in January I would be eight-9 months older. I actually should have started school at 5 and would have graduated at 17. Obviously the mix up made me almost a year younger. This made me not quite as far behind in school and that made it a little easier mentally.

The strange thing that I have never figured out is this. My real mother swears I went to school. I vividly remember that I didn't go to school and I wanted to so bad I would cry to go with my older brother. I remember going one time and I was sent home because I didn't have shoes. If I had gone to school, wouldn't there have been records? Someone would have known about the mix up. If I had gone to school why would I have started in the first grade and why would I have repeated that grade (obviously several times). If I had ever gone to school wouldn't I have known my age and even known my name? Also, if they thought my birthday was in January, that would have made me 7 when I was adopted. My parents thought I was seven. In 2009 I finally met my Aunt Irene. Imagine my shock when I was listening to my Aunt Irene talking about how I was 7 when I was adopted. She is positive I was 7. She says that I absolutely was not 6. If my birthday was in September, in March of 1958, I would have been 6, well 6 1/2. If my birthday was in January, then in March of 1958, I would have been 7. Are you confused yet? Well I am, so it's time to leave that one in the closet with the rest of the family skeltons....