Happy Birthday
Oh, You Remembered!
Happy Birthday Mary Ann Cater and Pat Smith. I don’t know why I recall Mary Ann and Pat’s birthdays, but I do.
I remember them both, from St. John Vianney grade school, grades 7 and 8. Pat was a sports buddy of mine, had 15 brothers and sisters, but we lost touch after our on-the-field rivalry ended. I think he became a doctor. Mary Ann, I must confess, was a gal I had an unspoken crush on—we would have made a wonderful couple—but there it stayed. Anyway, May 24th was both their birthdays, so Happy Birthday!
Wishing old friends a happy birthday, on their actual birthday, is important: a healthy ego boost for the recipient (you remembered me), extra glue bonding the friendship, and for peace on earth I imagine too.
You see, almost 30 years ago I met a special man, a former door-to-door vacuum or Fuller Brush salesman of sorts, who when I knew him, had become a legendary plaintiffs’ attorney, named Browne Greene. Browne was a serious people person. One day Browne and I were out for lunch when he offered me his twin insights on why he was so well regarded (and liked) within the legal community, “Always remember people’s first names and their birthdays, Bill,” he preached. His declaration stuck, mostly, I’m still working on names—sorry Leslie, whom I called Lisa recently—although Browne no longer acknowledges my birthday!?
Anyway, Mary Ann and Pat, as wonderful as I am sure they, are not on my annual call-on-birthday call sheet, like 100 other people are, so this greeting will come out of the blue to both. But I am usually good about calling people on their birthday. Even if it is a once-a-year touch, like sending Christmas cards—yes, we still do that—reaching out to people who were at some point part of your life is important. Because friendships are important. And for me, someone who was orphaned youngish, and does not have a close family, friendships are especially important. Maybe I embrace them longer than I should (Note to self for next psychoanalyst tune-up visit.), but I know how fleeting life is here on the third rock from the sun.
Now keeping track of people has obviously become easier. My little black book that evolved into a rolodex, has developed into an e-address book of multiple incarnations. Our social networks expand as we age, with a growing number of family, friends, classmates, girlfriends, and workmates. Today, A-Z we have over 800 people on our contact list—we move often, so don’t judge us on our frivolous nature. Of course, I well know that all those people in my address book are not real “friends”, but 100 are. And according to the Dunbar number, that’s about right too.
The Dunbar number was derived by British anthropologists, Dr. Robin Dunbar, who in studying human networks, found that on average people’s social networks typically ranged between 100 to 250 people in their lifetimes. Obviously, city folk have more connections (although they may be more frivolous in nature) than country folk, as do college-educated people and individuals who move around more, professionally and physically—travelers are known to make fast friends. Your social networks are said to peak in your 30s and then go flat until your late 60s, when your number of connections plummets—people start dying—and, as Dr. Dunbar says, “If you live long enough, it gets back to one or two.”
One or two, wow! That’s a little scary, depressing even. (Note to psychoanalyst...)
Anyway, I will not digress into the foolishness we call social media today, but to simply say that during my New York minute heyday on Facebook—when I let one of my children join and I wanted to helicopter parent her—I did get a lot of birthday greetings. It was just fantastic getting reacquainted with exes of varying degrees, people who sued me—I kid you not!—and wallflowers from grade school I barely recall, unlike Pat and Mary Ann. But the problem was, January 1st is not my birthday! But thanks anyway for thinking of me, sort of. And it just goes to show you, if it’s on Facebook it must be…
Writing this got me thinking—squirrel—so I did a quick quantitative analysis of the 100 people on my birthday call sheet. Now lest anyone get the wrong impression of me, I am not into the dark arts of palm reading, tarot cards and astrology, that’s my witchy wife’s department—and she is a good witch, like Glenda, not a bad witch by the way!—but I found that a large chunk (read: disproportionate) of people on my list were Libras and Leos, whatever that means? What it means to me, is that in July and August and October, I call a lot of old friends on their birthdays.
And recently, I learned that a new friend (Crystal) bumped into an old friend (Kevin) unknowingly. Now I used to hate that in college and in LA when I may have been dating multi-girlfriends, but now it’s kind of neat for two people I know to have found each other. It’s like closing a loop on something. Going full circle even, whatever that means? Which made me think about all that Six Degrees of Separation hoopla that came out of the 1993 movie and Kevin Bacon game. Obviously, our collective N = number is getting smaller in our era of hyper-connectivity. You don’t have to go to Disneyland to know it’s a small world—but go if you really must. Meta, or Facebook, or whatever the big ad company calls itself these days, reported that the degrees of separation had decreased from six to 4.57, while Twitter claims that N = 3.43.
Practically speaking though, in my house, N = 1—as in how many people needed to be called to reach a US Senator or the President of United States in order to save my ass when I went missing in the jungles of Borneo or the Amazon or was taken hostage in some remote outpost in Ethiopia or Nepal by Maoist guerillas. And thank goodness for that. It was my version of Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money” (1978). One is a good number! But then again, Three Dog Night sang that “One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do…” (1969).
But I digress, a lot, on Pat and Mary Ann’s special day…So Happy Birthday you two, wherever you are!
Again, thanks for the privilege of your time, it is the most precious thing we have, and I appreciate it. Be well.
William D. Chalmers © 2022 GreatEscape Adventures, Inc. All Rights Reserved.