pisces

So of course I had to call LinDuh today to sing that silly song: Happy happy birthday to you! to the tune of the 1812 Overture (thank you Tchaikovsky!) but LinDuh wasn't home - which was a very good thing. But I wasn't finished. I had to call Carlene and sing the same damned song - and she made me sing the whole freaking thing - since I seem to collect mostly Pisces friends as those closest to my heart. It figures. Who could love the indecisive, amorphous collective we other than we?

Carlene had a joke to tell, since she just recently met another Pisces who shares her actual birthday (though this other person is 15 years her junior, as Carlene is 12 years mine, and I am seven years junior to LinDuh). It involves the Piscean memory function (poorly developed). She and her dance student, upon realizing they shared a birthday, and laughing and commenting on it, also realized they might have had this conversation before, to whit the joke: "How many Pisces does it take to screw in a light bulb?" "What light bulb?" (My answer was "What? It's dark in here?")

Ten years ago, when I was working for IBM/Advantis, I called Carlene on 2/26 to wish her a happy birthday. I was absolutely certain we shared the day: the year before on her 25th birthday, she'd thrown herself a lovely and spiritual party (at which I smoked a cigar in her honor) on my birthday, the 26th. I commented that we shared a birthday and she assumed I knew her birthday was the following day. Okay, that's the premise. Following so far? No? Well, re-read and hang in there because something approaching slapstick ensues.

I was sitting at my desk in the cubicle farm on the 10th (executive) floor of the Advantis building, and I called Carlene to wish her a happy birthday. She answered, and upon hearing my greeting, said simply "Today's not my birthday." I don't know how else to explain the abrupt and earth-shattering confusion that followed except to say that we were both thrown into some alternate reality where time stood still. I wasn't sure where I was anymore, since I had been certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that today was indeed my birthday and that it was also hers. She was in the same state about what she felt she knew, with utter certainty, about the following day. Ever since that year she's had to think about whether her birthday is the 26th or 27th.

To say that it was an uncomfortable and awkward conversation is to immensely understate. But today we laughed a lot. I do believe my side hurts. And though she's worrying about her 15-year-old son who is in Costa Rica with his Waldorf School classmates, his first trip away from home and white-water rafting to boot, for a moment she was able to relax and reminisce and laugh.

In three days I'll call Barb to sing that same damned song.