Fifty-five years ago on April 20, 1955 I was a “welcome home” baby. About 10 months earlier my dad was released after several years in a tuberculosis hospital.

     As a child, I always loved my birthday date. Yes, I loved my birthday for presents, attention and cake like all kids do, but I mean I loved April 20 itself. Do all people love their birthday dates? In my case, my birthday in Ohio, where I grew up, was after winter finally passed and where we had about the longest way to go till winter hit again. And April is such a pretty word — as compared to January, February, September, October, November and December kind of names. And the number 20 is a nice round number so it sounds important — not like 13 or 14 or some random not rounded out kind of number.

     As I grew up, I still liked April 20 for those reasons, but when told about famous people in history who share my brithday, Adolf Hitler was never mentioned. What's up with that? As years went by, a few relatively insignificant actors like Jessica Lange and Ryan O’Neal finally showed up which helped balance out the singular famous April 20 person, Adolf.

     The Columbine shooting occurred on April 20, with other near-miss tragedies such as Oklahoma City and Waco on April 19. I'd finally grown up enough to be less shallow about it being on or near my birthday at that point, but watching such tragedies on TV was shocking and awfully sad.

     Last year I found out 420 is the slang for April 20 being national marijuana awareness day. Just interesting. Rumor has it that this started because a group of California high schoolers used to meet at 4:20 pm after detention every day to smoke pot. Now the day is the most official marijuana day of the year. 

     This year I get a kick out of turning 55 — since I was born in 1955. Mentioning this to Ray McAllister he said that this year is a cool year for boomers in that all boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are somewhere in age between 46 and 64 — the only year that this will occur. That's so cool! 

     For those who know me, random stupid things like these occupy the most important parts of the brain leaving nowhere for the truly important things.

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