At a presentation the other day, someone spotted a particular date written on a document. “Hey, that’s my birthday!”, he blurts out to a group of people he didn’t even know.  Everyone looked at him and then he announces the date, “March 15th!”.  Immediately another guy says, “Hey, March 15th?  Me too!!!” and he smiled, all excited.  Suddenly, the two strangers were connected, as if they were old friends.  Then a woman ups and says, “I’m March 9th!”.  Clearly she had to get in on this and then two more people announced their birthdays, March 20th and March 27th.  When we got to March 27th, I felt compelled to announce that I had a birthday coming up in August.  I was feeling left out.  Here was this group who within a matter of less than a minute, went from being complete strangers to having some sort of deeply bonded connection.  

The presentation was completely interrupted for a few minutes as the discussion moved to horoscope signs. You see, those birth dates, although they all had a common month, straddled two horoscope signs.  So that brought in more people…those who were February Pisces and March Aries. Now we have a whole group of brand new instant friends with a strong bond simply by virtue of being born in February, March or April (Aries runs right into April). Wow, all this within minutes.  It was clear that taking a few moments for some birthday bonding was important.

I’ve always been fascinated by this “Me too!” reaction when someone mentions their birthday. It doesn’t matter how old someone is, there is something that happens when you feel you can “connect” somehow on some level, any level.  People get all excited whenever they can jump in and say, “Me too!”.  

I got to thinking about this birthday thing because I have only ever known one other person who shared my birth date, actually right down to the year of birth too.  I realized that there are certain things that get me very excited when I can say, “Hey, me too!” but when it comes to my birthday, I am convinced that there are some higher powers making damn sure I never run into someone who is going to announce to me that they share my birthday.  Impossible!  As far as I’m concerned, there was only one person born on that day and that is me.  That day is mine, entirely mine and so is the month for that matter.  If you come and tell me that your birthday is in August, I will begrudgingly accept it but you’d best just leave it at that.  I would probably immediately cup my ears and start singing “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you!”.  I simply do not want to know the day because god help you if you think you’ll be getting any piece of the spotlight that day.  You can stand in the wings and I’ll throw you a piece of cake but the spotlight is mine.  Yeah, I’ll “me too” you on something else, but not on my birthday.

So, what do you think it is that gets us all excited when we have the opportunity to say “Me too!”?  I’m suspecting that we like to feel connected somehow, but maybe it’s completely about something else…  Maybe it’s just that “me too” feels really good!!  I’ve particularly noticed it with the birth dates but it can be on something as simple as hearing someone say, “I love apple pie!”, and boom, you are suddenly taken over by this uncontrollable compulsion to say, “me too!”.  

Kharim