Monday, June 12, 2006

A very merry unbirthday

I have no idea why that scene from Alice in Wonderland struck me.

Oh right.

A little more than 10 years ago, in our hurry to obtain our marriage license from the city of Boston, my husband had his father retrieve a certified copy of his birth certificate. His dad didn't notice that the hospital made a typo. So this certified document indicated that my husband's birthdate was June 12, 1972, rather than June 15. Subsequently, our marriage license also uses this birthdate.

We moved to Green Bay a few days after we got married. Since there were now 2 official documents listing his birthdate as June 12, the state of Wisconsin followed suit.

By the time we moved back to New York, there wasn't any correcting this discrepancy. Even though we'd since obtained the original birth certificate, the New York Department of Motor Vehicles insisted on using the date on his Wisconsin license. By the time we moved to New Jersey 2 years ago, we'd given up trying to change it. As you might imagine, whenever we're asked about his birthdate, we say: "June 15...uh, no. June 12." which usually gets me some dirty looks that I can't remember my husband's birthday...but he really gets a hairy eyeball. How come you don't know your own birthday?!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

due to some screw up with the hospital where i was born and the social security my SSN was registerd with 3 different birthdates. at one time i was old enough to join AARP. this has since been cleared up... though i had nothing to do with it.