Today is Monday. I was born on a Monday, seventy-three years ago, on this very date. The next time it will happen it will be 2037! It doesn’t seem like it has been that long ago, nearly three quarters of a century, but here I am.

I’m sitting at a computer typing away and it will be published to the world wide web. It certainly isn’t anything I had ever dreamed about growing up. It was on July 20th, 1969, when we landed men on the moon. That was on a Sunday. I remember seeing it on television. There are those today claiming it was all a hoax.

A lot has happened since that Monday in 1953 when I entered the world. Just about a month earlier a married couple, Juluis and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of conspiracy, had been executed in the electric chair. The last time that was done was just thirteen years ago. The convict chose that method over lethal injection. A big change, the criminal gets to choose.

On the Monday I was born the United Nations voted to make UNICEF a permanent agency. I recall collecting pennies for UNICEF at Halloween, today pennies are no longer being produced. I guess it has to be nickels for UNICEF these days, probably an app for that.

The next Monday, my first full Monday, the Korea War was ended. Well, it wasn’t a declared war, it was a police action or armed conflict. Only Congress can declare war and they didn’t do that. In fact, they haven’t done so since! I was on a US Navy vessel when it was declared that the Vietnam War had ended. That was on a Wednesday.

Although I can’t say it for certain, I probably started my first real job on a Monday. I retired from the US Navy on November 1st, 1993. That was a Monday. What a coincidence. I did hold several jobs after that. I retired and started collecting my social security benefits as soon as I was able. That was also on a Monday. A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.

I have no plans for this Monday. No party, no big events planned. I don’t expect much will happen on the national or international scene today. Of course, you can never be certain. Mom didn’t plan on giving birth on a Monday, she would have preferred the weekend. She didn’t get to go home until Wednesday, and it was raining that day, July 23, 1953.

It was on December the 8th, 1941 that Roosevelt declared war on Japan. That was twelve years before my birth. It happened on a Monday. He said it was ” a date that will live in infamy”, although often misquoted as a day that will live in infamy. I was born on Monday, July the 20th, 1953.

There was no announcement in the local paper, no speeches, no resolutions passed. It was just another Monday. It has only happened eight times since then: July the 20th being on a Monday I mean. The next time it happens, I will be eighty-four.

That’s me, on the right. The boy on the left is Barry Collum. Also born on a Monday, July the 20th, 1953. He lived next door to one of my aunts on Soakhide Road, East Hampton, New York.