This Little Piggy

Editors note: Depending on how big a nerd you are, you will love this post or be bored to tears.  At least its not about fantasy football.

In my family birthdays are kind of a big deal.  Not because we like getting older or getting presents, but because we like any excuse to be together, and of course there is food involved.  With the exception of five birthdays within five days from August 28 and September 1, our birthdays are pretty spread out through the year.  That has not always been the case.  When there were only ten of us, four birthdays were in September.  Further back, before my time, three of the five original members of our family were born in September (it help that two of them were twins).

Back when we were all kids, there were sixteen birthdays spread over nine months.  Technically it was only fifteen since there are twins in the family.  We were only missing May, October, and November   By the time the first two great grands were born, the family had grown to twenty-one, and we had birthdays in eleven months.  November was all that we lacked.  A November married into the family in 2004 and completed our collection.  I don't know if twenty-six is a typical number of birthdays to get to one in every month.  I ran an experiment on facebook to see.  It took twenty-five and thirty-six births on my two attempts.

Once we finally got a November, they kept coming.  Three of the last eight new family members were born in November including last Monday's birth.  January is tied with September for the most births at four.  October is the only month with just one birthday.  Since we have all twelve months covered, I think that we should now go for all thirty-one dates.  The first and twenty-first are the most common dates at three each.  Of course all three births on the first were in September.  If I remembered everyone's birthdate correctly, we still need 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 17, 19, 22, 26, and 31.  Anyone wanting to marry into our family would find it to their advantage to have been born on one of those dates.  If somehow our unborn descendants are reading this, try to be born on one of these dates.

My parents have five grandchildren who are collectively known as the Handful.  Some times, instead of calling them by their names, we will call them by their finger names: Pointer, Bird, Ring, Pinkie, and Thumb.  When the fifth Sandlin great grand was born, I named them the Other Hand.  That naming and numbering system worked fine for a year and a half until Monday when the youngest Sandlin was born.  Since all ten fingers have been taken, it is time to start counting on toes.  Unfortunately not all the toes have names.  The King Toe and Pinkie Toe do, but the middle three are nameless.  The only solution to the problem is to use the This Little Piggy Nursery Rhyme, but the question is, which one?  Does he Go to market or Want some corn?  I am inclined to choose the latter.  It is unlikely that we complete both feet, so I will probably keep counting on the same foot regardless of which side of the family the next great grad is born.