I probably won't tell you my birthday, Part One.

Let me set the scene. You're in a public place, a hang. Maybe a bar or a club, a restaurant, or walking your dog down by the river. You strike up a conversation with somebody for any number of reasons: attraction, coincidence, you have the same dog. You begin the complex yet familiar task of "getting to know someone". You are accumulating factoids. "Oh, you never saw Jaws II? How weird, me too!" They ask how old you are. You tell them. "Ah ok," they nod. And then they ask your birthday.

This is the point in the conversation where I usually say something like, "I'll tell you my birthday...if you tell me your family's patron Hindu god."

See, there is absolutely no reason for someone who just met you to know your birthday. Except to learn your astrological sign. And what's wrong with that? Well, nothing. To each his or her own. It's not that I don't want to tell you my sign, it's just that I don't have one*.

I don't have an astrological sign any more than you have a Chinese zodiac (dog, monkey, snake) if you aren't Chinese, or an idea of who you were before your current reincarnation, if you don't believe in reincarnation, or a favorite Bible story if you aren't Christian.

I would rather not tell you my birthday, because once I do, everything that I have freely chosen to reveal about myself up until this point in our enjoyable little conversation will now be squeezed into an astrological-sign-shaped box. (Ah...he said THIS, but he must have meant THAT.) And I don't know about you, but my identity is far too complex to be 1-out-of-12.

This illustration is only one piece of a larger puzzle. To be continued...

*On a side note, I personally believe that while the planets move in geometric circles, there is no reason to extend that motion to the symbolic notion of cycles. A "birthday" is the day of your birth. It happens once and never again. Birthday Anniversaries, as we all celebrate, are a fun and harmless excuse to party, but nothing more.