A Very Merry Unbirthday

Parents lie to their children. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. The dog went to live on a farm. We’re out of cookies. This is the best drawing I’ve ever seen. So on and so forth. All parents lie, and my own were no different. However, my folks just had to take it step further, risking dishonorable discharge from the military and even jail time for the lie they told me.

The year is 1984, and even though I’m only three years old, I’m already running intellectual circles around my classmates in pre-school. My shoelaces are perfectly tied. I can count to 100 and I read to my parents every night from the TV Guide. My macaroni art is a goddamn masterpiece. As such, they decide I’m ready for kindergarten, and attempt to enroll me. Obviously, the school board tells them NOPE! She’s too young, she has to be four years old, sorry, come back next year.

Discouraged, my parents worry that I will forget everything I’d already learned, prompting them to re-enroll me for a second year of pre-school, which of course I proceed to smash like an absolute boss. I become the reigning champion of Musical Chairs. I’m unstoppable at Simon Says. At Thanksgiving, my turkey made from construction paper and that outline of my tiny hand is so uncommonly brilliant, it looks like it might come to life and slap a hater across the face.

A year later, my parents once more attempt to get me into kindergarten. But… NOPE! “Yes, four-year-olds can be enrolled,” they are told, “but only if the child is going to be turning five on or before November 1st.” Narrowly missing that deadline by a mere month, my birthday falling on December 3rd, they are casually dismissed and told to come return next year. Again.

This time, though… This time my parents aren’t having any of that nonsense. They are one-hundred percent D-O-N-E with the bureaucratic bullshit.

Now keep in mind this is the early 1980s. It was a different time. Gifted and talented programs were still just a twinkle in some young education administrator’s eye. There was no internet. And you could produce some unbelievably convincing counterfeit documents using just a Xerox machine and a bottle of White-Out.

So. That’s exactly what my parents do. My father, in the truest evil genius fashion, takes it upon himself to falsify my birth certificate, thus assigning me a whole new date of birth. Then he and my mother take a drive to the next county over, where nobody knew them or me or their efforts to get me into the school system. They present their phony documents, and it works like a charm. Their darling only child would be starting kindergarten that Fall, no third year of pre-school needed. All’s well in the court of Joe and Darla.

Or is it? That’s when it occurs to them that the linchpin in this entire enterprise was none other than me: A precocious 4-year-old with a really big fuckin’ mouth. As the abject horror dawns, they realized that I could innocently but oh-so-easily bring their entire house of cards toppling down. What is a parent to do?

Lie to the child, of course. Lie, lie, and lie some more. Smart as she is, she’s still just a dumb kid, and she’ll eventually believe anything adults tell her. Just gaslight her really really hard, it’ll be totally fine.

As such, for several years of my tender childhood I believed that my birthday was October 28th. The phrase “December 3rd” was completely banished from our family’s vocabulary. It didn’t exist. Extended relatives were notified and reminded on an annual basis. Lavish birthday parties were held at the end October. They sold the lie, and I totally bought into it.

Fast-forward a few years. I am in the second grade now, and continuing to excel in school. My father, an active-duty service member in the Marine Corps, has received orders back to the small military town in South Carolina where my mother is from. Where she knows people, and isn’t comfortable continuing the lie. Not to mention they know they cannot keep it up forever, so they register me for school using my real birth certificate. Due to the fact that I had already completed a couple of grade levels with report cards documenting my superior academic progress, the new school doesn’t question my young age and they enroll me without any problems. My parents’ crime is washed away. Nobody needs to know.

Now came time to tell their precious baby girl the truth: That she had been living a lie. A birthday lie.

They sit me down, real serious-like, in the living room. My dad is in the recliner, my Mom is on the couch and has me cuddled up beside her. She’s wearing a purple top that she bought during our family trip to Hershey Park, and it has fringe around the sleeves and bottom. They proceed with their attempt to explain a saga of criminal document forgery to their 7-year-old daughter. That they are aren’t bad people, they did it to help me, but nobody can ever know because they could get in a lot of trouble. Also that we have to have my party in December, not October.

As I’m quietly listening to them, I am playing with the fringe on my mother’s top, and during this conversation I inexplicably manage to teach myself how to do a simple braid. When I don’t respond, they get worried. Do I understand? Am I angry? Confused? Have they traumatized me for life? They ask me if I have any questions.

“Yes, I do.”

“Tell us baby girl, you can ask us anything.”

“Can I go outside and play now, please?”

I literally do not care. Their big news doesn’t phase me in the slightest. I am more excited about spontaneously figuring out to braid my hair than I am about the giant secret my parents have been keeping from me. After a few reassurances that I understand I had to keep the secret forever (or at least until I am a 41-year-old grad student and writing this memoir for an MFA orientation class, oops!), they finally breathe a shared sigh of relief, and send me outside to go be a happy 7-year-old. Man, kids are so damn resilient.

All of this did create a different kind of tradition for me, though. Since that fateful day when my parents revealed the truth of my DOB to me, I have obviously celebrated the miracle of my birth on December 3rd like normal well-adjusted adult. However, I also have a little secret of my own. Because every year, on the 28th of October, I treat myself just a little. Nothing crazy. Just a private little indulgence. A nice lunch out, or a little splurge on Amazon. And in the finest tradition of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, I wish myself a very merry un-birthday.