Perhaps there is already a name for this phenomenon, but if so, I am not aware of it. Suppose there is a special event that takes place, birthday, anniversary, etc. Suppose it take place on the nth day of the month. When the anniversary of the event is on the nth year, it should be an even more special occasion. For instance, if you were born on June 23, then your 23rd birthday should be a specially marked event. I don’t know of any name for this, but I am coining one, calling it a “perfect” anniversary. (This is derived from the idea of perfect numbers.)
If such a “perfect” anniversary were to exist, then today, June 23, 2008 is the “perfect” anniversary of my bar mitzvah ceremony, which took place 23 years ago, on June 23, 1985.
There are two things that I look back on with astonishment. One is that I managed to get my pilot’s license, that I actually flew airplanes by myself. The other is that somehow managed to get through my bar mitzvah service, although I felt completely unprepared. Keep in mind, I had to memorize vast amounts of Hebrew. Keep further in mind that I had to chant this Hebrew before a large audience. Finally, understand that there were frightening lapses in my ability to memorize this stuff, and in fact, most of the second part I had not memorized at all. I remember as though it were yesterday, getting to the portion that I had not yet memorized, wondering what to do, and finally decided to push my way through it with brute force. No one ever said if they noticed that I was making up what seemed to me to be gibberish at that point. I was infinitely relieved when it was all over. By comparison, my first solo flight was a piece of cake.
I did no lip-syncing at the reception of my own bar mitzvah, which is a great relief to me and everyone else around, seeing as how strausmouse will recall the lip-syncing debacle in which I starred at a mutual friend’s bar mitzvah reception around the same time.
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