April 19: Sharing My Birthday However Unwillingly

 

 Sharing My Birthday However Unwillingly

                             by Tom King

Today's my birthday which is kind of weird.
  Cause it's not just mine alone.
All sorts of birthdays, anniversaries and such
   Share the date with me.*
I first noticed this in the early 1990s,
   When my Sweet Baboo was making a cake
For my birthday and we were listening
   To the news and puttering around the kitchen.
And we watched the Branch Davidian compound
   Catch fire and kill those inside.
Again on my birthday a terrorist blew up
   A federal building in Oklahoma.
I began to look back at birthdays past.
   I read a disturbing science fiction story,
And in it the world ended April 19, 1954 -
   My actual birthday. It was kind of creepy.
In history, I found I also shared the date with
   The shot heard round the world in 1775.
   The San Francisco Earthquake
And various massacres, shootouts, riots and such
I don't like to watch the news on my birthday.
   Feels like that way nothing bad will happen
To innocent people or a war will start
   It's not that the date is bad juju or jinxed.
Or that my birth has anything to do with catastrophes.
   My dog died on my birthday which spoiled it for me.
I've taken to celebrating my birth two days early and late
   With my birthday in the middle. I call it Cinco de' Tom.

I figure spreading it out dilutes the actual birthdate's significance,
   In case the devil's trying to creep me out.

© 2022 by Tom King

*Some Things That Have Happened on April 19: 

• 1775 The shot heard 'round the world - Battle of Lexington and Concord
• 1775 Paul Revere and William Dawes ride and are captured by the British
• 1861 Baltimore riots- Civil War secessionist uprising
• 1897 Boston Marathon begins
• 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
• 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising
• 1985 FBI & ATF agents seize The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord's Arkansas compound
• 1989 USS Iowa gun turret explodes
• 1993 Branch Davidian siege ends in fire
• 1995 Murrah Building blown up
• 2013 Boston Marathon bomber killed in shootout
• 2018 Derry Northern Island riots
• 2020 Nova Scotia massacre -22 killed
• 2022 Three mass shootings in just this past week (which included my birthday)