What Goes Around Comes Around

My birthday is in December, and therefore I was almost always, if not the youngest in my class, very nearly so. When I was little, this was a source of annoyance, occasionally of anguish. There’s nothing a 7 1/2-year-old enjoys more than lording it over a mere 7-year-old (at least, among the 7-year-olds I knew–perhaps you knew a nicer breed of grade-schooler than I did). ”You have to do what I say because I’m older.”

So for a long time I really really wanted to have a July birthday, if not a J...