A friend of ours was approaching her 40th birthday. But she only admitted to having a “round” birthday, and even forbade her kids to talk about mommys age, even though we made a big production to learn her age with trick questions and all. And then we told her that if she keeps mum about her age, we’ll just guesstimate it.

That’s how she got sent loads of cards for her 50th birthday. She was a bit pissed when we arrived for the party. And then we handed her the real cards for her 40th.

Migrants from war torn countries unfortunately. In some communities there’s a lot of people with birthdays on Jan 1st, because they don’t know their birthdates. Quite common for Sudanese refugees (places with child soldiers or where family/parent based killing happened).

It’s tough out there in the world.