Random Birthday Facts

Because I used to work at a college, I have a lot of friends listed on my Facebook. This is not bragging; this is what happens when you work with students who like to add nearly everyone they meet to their Facebook pages. And you have friends who make up Facebook profiles for their cats.

I somehow feel it would be rude to "un-friend" them since they've not done anything that merits it. So I cyber-trudge around with a ridiculously long list of people linked on the page compared to the short list of people with whom I regularly interact. It also means I often have no idea when some of them look at their own lists, say "Brett who?" and de-list me. I decided to use that list as an aide to a charitable cause to which I donate. I donated money per month based on how many people on my list had birthdays that month. Some random facts I learned through this experience:

1. If you try this out yourself, put a couple of extra bucks away to get ready for October. For some reason (cough - New Year's Eve nine months earlier - cough), that month featured about 17% more birthdays than its closest competitor. My apologies to those of you with birthdays in October who were just traumatized by what you may not have considered before right now.

2. And second place was September. Again, my apologies to those of you who have had to contemplate certain aspects of the way your folks celebrated Christmas that you'd been suppressing. My birthday is in September; I am one of you.

3. January has by far the lowest total. People pay their taxes in April.

4. I know a freakishly large number of people who share my birthday. In fact, it tied October 23rd as the day with the most friends' birthdays on it at 7. I'll give the nod to my birthday because I know at least two more people who are not on Facebook who share it and because it's my birthday and I'm an incredibly biased judge. A few days featured six birthdays and there was a pretty good collection of those with five.

5. There were probably between 15 and 20 days throughout the year on which none of my friends had birthdays. Tomorrow, for example.

6. Whenever your birthday is, hope you enjoy it and the new year of 2010!