Sapo Verde.

Unlike any normal birthday girl, I've always hated being sung to at birthday parties.

It's great that it took my family 22 years to get out of the habit (although Mom managed to partially sing her broken-English version to me as I sliced through the cake my little sister bought me... which by the way, depresses me when I mention it because I can never afford to buy Little Sister anything), I only had to bury my head between my hands in shame for so long.

There's been a lot of love shown my way, something good on this day that was so freaking... horrible.
Who the hell schedules an exam on my birthday? Shit.

As I wrote the date down on the Scantron, my brain asked:

Dude, did you ever think you were going to be doing this shit back in... 1997? Taking a Biochem exam the day of your twenty-second birthday? Wasn't I supposed to be doing something important by now?


Shit, back in March of 1997 I was busy reading The Giver and freaking out over the existence of infanticide (the color red is the first thing that pops into my mind when I remember that book), what did I care about 2007?

I was still recovering from the fact that Selena was no more; even looking forward to the Selena movie opening later that month. Biochemistry? C'mon now! Who cared about the Pentose Phosphate Pathway when the controversy of a Puerto Rican Jennifer Lopez portraying the Mexican-American Selena was in full swing?

-Not me! Why WAS a Puerto Rican playing a Mexican-American? Oh yeah, because they couldn't find another Mexican-American girl with that size badunkadunk in such short notice.

Oh Selena, why must you have gotten stabbed (or was it shot?) by that idiot on my birth month? It's never been the same since that fateful 1995 date. At least Spring hasn't turned intolerably hot just yet. I Still have Spring to cheer March up.

Anyway, that reminds me of being in first grade and realizing I wasn't the only person born on the First of March. Being tiny and ignorant (I still thought everyone was Catholic, and every Latino was Mexican until third grade when I befriended a Mormon Salvadorean), I thought only I, the uniquely talented AnoMALIE, was born on that day; as I imagined the twenty other six-year-olds were born on their special dates. I still remember the boy's name: Benny, and how I became irritated because I thought he was pulling my leg.

"But only I was born on March 1st, 1985! You shut the hell up, Benny, and own up to your own date!"

Poor Benny only stared at me with a nervous smile (nice way of dealing with a neurotic kid, I suppose). That's when the teacher had to pull me aside and explain to me that it was very possible of sharing my birth date with another person, and that each year, each day, tons of babies were born all over the world, and thus, share a birthday. Benny would just be my birthday-buddy, which is always fun.

"Well, couldn't my birthday-buddy be cooler than Benny? I mean, look at the kid! He has pasty, translucent skin, with black rings under his eyes... like some raccoon (I had a bad experience with a raccoon earlier that year while camping with my family up in Brian Head. But aside from that, I later figured out Benny was anemic... which... man... oh man). And he laughs ALL the time."

"Now, AnoMALIE, that's not nice. You must love and respect your peers! Benny's just extra special."
Man, did I need a couple of slaps to the face... what an annoying bitch I was.

So yes, that's the embarrassing manner in which I found out that no, I wasn't the only person born on "my" day.
The day of that epiphany still reemerges from my vault of memories from time to time, especially on this day, my good ol' birthday.