My Seventeenth Birthday

On an October morning in 1989, in Amarillo, Texas, I was born. It was my birthday, and since it was the first time I was born, it was my first birthday. Theoretically, they would have kept counting from there, but a year later, in 1990, I had another "first" birthday. Obviously it was not the first, since I had been born the year before. But, since I was then one instead of zero, they called it my first birthday.

Thus it has been ever since, and this year, on the 29th, it will be my seventeenth birthday, and I will be exactly sixteen years old. This may seem odd, but if you think about it long enough, you'll realise that I've already had sixteen birthdays (including the one I was born on), and this will be my seventeenth.

In case you doubt me, please consider the following excerpt from the dictionary, which has not been altered from its original form:

birth·day  (-dā´)  n.  1. the day of a person's birth or a thing's beginning  2. the anniversary of this day

In other words, there are two types of birthdays. One is the day on which you were born, and the other is an anniversary of that date. So, if you count both together, you get one more than is usually used.

Thus, at the end of this month, I will be sixteen on my seventeenth birthday.