Vanessa Fox. Nude.

Wikipedia needs authentication that I do, in fact, exist and am not, as I often wonder, a figment of someone else’s imagination, crazy dream, or psychedelic hallucination. The authentication they need is that I was born. Which is indeed a good indicator of existence. If you are never born, then you can only exist as a literary hero and/or villain, visiting angel (and/or devil), or I suppose you could be God. I am none of those things, as far as I know, and in fact, I do have a date of birth. September 1, 1972. I always liked being born on the 1st day of the month for some reason. I’m number one! As though I had any influence over the matter.

Sometimes my birthday would fall on Labor day and then I didn’t have to go to school and at some schools I went to, school didn’t even start until after Labor day, which meant I was assured a day of leisure. Being born near a holiday is cool when you’re a kid. When you’re an adult, being born near a holiday means that if you want to go away for the weekend on your birthday, you have to pay extra and hang out with holiday crowds. Not that I’ve become a cranky old lady or anything, so just stop thinking that right now.

I was born in Long Beach, CA, which as you may know is home to the Queen Mary, a very large ship that doesn’t actually sail anywhere. I didn’t live there long, but I’ve lived in lots of places all around Southern California, and most of my family and friends are scattered about the general area, so I make it back fairly often. I’ve also lived lots of other places, but I assume that at some point you have to stop reading this entry and go back to work or to your homes or make dinner or something, so I’ll save all of that for another day when you have a bit more time.

If you are good at math, you may have already worked out that as I was born in 1972, I will be 35 in only a few short months and even if you are mediocre in math, you probably realize that means that puts me firmly in my mid-thirties. Which sounds quite a bit closer to the grave than early thirties. I am even older than Todd, and I wouldn’t point out his edging towards mid-thirtydom except that he seemed a little too delighted to confirm that I was practically decrepit compared to him when I saw him the other night. You’re thinking that cranky old lady thing again, aren’t you? Yeah, I’m sort of thinking it too.

In any case, the point is that as I do have a date and location of birth, I’m likely not a literary character. Which is a bit unfortunate, because how cool would that be? Especially if it was a make your own adventure book. Unless it was someone else making the adventure. And I suppose that would be the case. So, maybe things have worked out for the best after all.