About Three Dates

First, let's look at May 29 and October 9.

If I told you the "death days" for the famous people whose birthdays the above two dates represent, you might say, oh yeah... really? But instead, we remember November 22 instead of May 29 and December 8 instead of October 9 to remember the lives of John F. Kennedy and John Lennon. How come?

After all, these individuals were respected and even loved, not reviled, so their dying days were sad and tragic occasions. Why not remember their birthdays instead? After all, we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as a national holiday on January 15...or the nearest Monday to it. Why not mark May 29 and October 9 as well for some positive celebration?

I think the reason is pretty self-evident, actually. We weren't around JFK or the former Beatle great when either were born, but their deaths were a kind of shared event among us: most people remember where they were and what they were doing when the tragic news was heard (presuming that they were old enough at the time, of course). So although their births weren't all that personal for us, their deaths certainly were...and unforgettable. But I think that there is still room enough on the calendar to give a little more attention to the birthdays too, don't you?

On an almost completely unrelated note, connected only because it's about dates, I remember the first time I ever followed the New Years Day college football bowl games. I was out with my father in some shop somewhere on US 441 in Hollywood, Florida in the afternoon on January 1, 1968. They had a television there tuned in to the Cotton Bowl game in Dallas, that year pitting Texas A&M against Alabama (the Cotton Bowl actually meant something back then). Just because I thought that "A&M" was an intriguing part of a college's name, I began to root for them. And they won, beginning the process luring me in as a habitual televised football spectator. In subsequent years, I looked forward to New Years Day with its major bowl games. As time passed by, the number of bowls proliferated. Finally, one, and then more of them began to be moved to the days immediately following in January. Still, I always knew that there would be some good college football to watch on New Years Day. Right?

Wrong! This coming New Years Day features ZERO bowl games! But don't despair, football junkies: it's on a Sunday that just happens to be the final regular season day for the NFL. I guess the television networks pretty much control the scheduling for football nowadays. Still, I miss that New Year's college bowl tradition...