This is an excerpt from my most recent post. My deceased father was a very good man. He never took a drink of alcohol - despite his very bizarre entry into this world.

A few years before my father’s death at the age of 94, we had a conversation that should have been had way, way earlier, given its bizarre, head-scratching significance. I was driving him to a doctor’s appointment when the subject of his birthday came up. We knew the date, August 31st. We also knew that he wasn’t actually born on that date. For some crazy reason, nobody in the family had ever asked for an explanation…until that late-in-life car ride to the doctor’s office. 

As best remembered, this is how the conversation played out.

Mike: “Why don’t you know your actual birthdate?”

Dad: “Well, I was born at home and from what I was told, it was the middle of the night and the doctor, who lived down the block, was pretty drunk when he arrived.”

Mike: “And…”

Dad: “After my mother gave birth, the doctor, still drunk, didn’t feel capable of walking home so he asked my mother to move over in the bad so he could crawl in next to her and sleep it off.”

Mike: (slack-jawed) “Wait! The doctor got in bed with your mother and her newborn…you…and fell asleep?”

Dad: “Yeah, and that’s why he didn’t fill out a birth certificate. They say he was pretty hammered.”

Mike: “Where was your father?”

Dad: “Probably hammered too.”

Mike: “My God, this is headline material in any family! Why am I just hearing this now?”

Dad: “You never asked before.”

Mike: “So why August 31st?”

Dad: “Before the war broke out in ‘41, I wanted to enlist in the Navy, but needed a birth certificate. My dad and I had to go to a justice of the peace in Paterson and provide details of my birth, which we didn’t have, so when the judge asked for an approximate date, we told him that it happened in 1916, sometime at the end of summer.”

Mike: “Kind of like when a shepherd refers to ‘lambing season’ as the time of year when baby sheep arrive?’”

Dad: “Yeah.”

Mike: “So…”

Dad: “So, the judge says, ‘let’s call it August 31st.’ And that was it.”

Mike: (still somewhat slack-jawed) “And you don’t think this is weird?”

Dad: “My father didn’t know his real birthday either.”

Mike: “Oh, man.”