I was born at 12:02 AM. While this might not seem important, it became a very big issue when I turned 16. You see, my due date was 3/24. On 3/24, my mother went into labor and headed to the hospital. Now due dates are just estimates, but, for my mom it worked out just right, almost. That night, after arriving at the hospital early in the morning and a long labor, I popped out at...two minutes after midnight.
After nine months of telling everyone about the 3/24 due day, and me being her first child, and being at the hospital for most of 3/24, my mom was proud of her new son, born on what she assumed was 3/24. Now, back in the seventies in a small country hospital, details were just not that important. It was the correct time and date on my birth certificate, it is just that no one ever bothered to look at it that closely. We spent the next decade and half celebrating my birthday on 3/24 and we never looked closely at the birth certificate again. Even enrolling in schools and showing copies of the birth certificate and my Social Security card, it wasn't until I went to get my actual drivers license that a lady at the DMV noticed that what I put down for my birth date did not match my documents.
That's right, for 16 years I didn't know my own birthday. Luckily, it was not too big of an issue to fix, since I had never had an actual job, and only went through one school system at that point. It was more the embarrassment of having to explain to people that we had all assumed that I was born on 3/24, and no one in the family paid attention to the clock or my official documents. I don't blame the doctor or nurses, as they probably didn't see the need to point out that I actually came out at 12:02AM and that is the next day to a new mother.
It became a tradition that we go out to dinner for my birthday on 3/24 every year, and then my actual birthday the next day. Even so, my mom still always gets a little embarrassed when it gets brought up.
(I completely made this up, I was not born on 3/25, I am not the first born and of course my mom knows my birthday. This scenario just popped in my head earlier today.)
