Easter Dates and My Birthday and Other Meaningless Stuff.....

I have always been fascinated by dates (numbers in general, but mostly dates -- and zip codes). My birthday is April 7th, and when I was young it seemed that Easter Sunday always fell NEAR my birthday but never ON it. When my birthday finally coincided with Easter, I was 24 years old and had a 10-month-old baby, so it wasn't nearly as big a deal as I had thought. The next time was 1996, and all I could think about was how close the Olympics were going to be and thinking I might be able to attend some of the events (I didn't).

I should have partied harder on both those occasions, because Easter will never again fall on my birthday.

Well, unless I live to be 114 and 119. And while I guess that's entirely possible, it's also possible that my definition of partying will have changed significantly.

Look at the chart below (you'll have to click on the picture to make it bigger) and see how strange the distribution of Easter dates is. I am aware of how Easter is defined, but I would still expect SOME kind of pattern over a 250-year span.

Poor April 8th gets the shaft even more - it only gets Easter Sunday 5 times in that 250-year span. And how about March 24th? Really, why bother? It gets one and March 23rd gets TWO? What's up with that? Yet April 10th and April 17th get a whopping eleven Easters each, the hogs. Even April Fools' Day gets 10 Easters, and don't you know some parents with a penchant for practical jokes could have a FIELD DAY with April Fools' Day occurring the same day as the Easter Bunny's annual visit?

I have lost count of the number of students I've taught over the years, but let's just say (conservatively) that I have taught an average of 100 students per year, over a 26-year span. Out of 2600 (approximately) students, how many do you think I've had who shared my birthday?

Two.

And they were at the same school in the same year.

It's puzzles like these that get me on the elliptical every morning. I want to live long enough to solve them.

Remember me mentioning Midlife Swimmer in last night's post? She mentioned in her post today that her birthday is next week, so I left a comment asking her what day. I thought to myself, "What are the odds?"

Apparently they are pretty good. Midlife Swimmer and I have the same birthday, though I'd be willing to guess her big 5-0 is significantly more than 8 days away.

I apologize for any stress I may have caused with this mind-boggling post. You may now stop banging your head against the wall. It won't help anyway.