I love birthdays, not because of the attention and praise that it brings, but maybe because it feels like a fresh start, like a clean whiteboard where all the black and red and blue and green marks have been erased, promising new tasks, new projects, new lists, and maybe new adventures.
May is the birthday month for many friends and relatives, including a son, a brother, a grandmother, a grandfather, and a great grandfather. Oh, and mine too. I know several people, inlcuding a couple of baseball stars, who have birthdays on my birthday. And the organist in the church where I grew up, in Onawa, Iowa, shares that day.
My son, grandma, grandpa, and I share our four birthdays within a five day span.
I’ve heard that, statistically, there’s some number of people for whom the likelihood of finding someone in the room, and with the same birthdate, is very high.
Google AI says that there’s something called “The birthday paradox,” demonstrated by this graph:
showing that there is a 50% chance that, in a group of 23 people, 2 will have the same birthday. This is because there are 253 possible pairs of people to compare birthdays, which is more than half of the days in a year.”
It makes sense when you stop to think about it, but it still amazes (no, surprises? Amuses? Yeah maybe amuses) me.
May is also a cool month (cool as in Miles Davis cool, not cool as in temperature, at least in NC) with the Kentucky Derby, for starters, and Memorial Day weekend, for enders.
So Happy Birthday to all you birthday in May folks. May is my favorite month.