Beginning life on the most boring day

In one of his classic stand-up comedy routines, Bill Cosby noted that he started out as a child.

I just found out that I started out on what has been decided was the most boring day of the 20th century.

My mom and dad eloped on April 9, 1954. Doing the math backward nine months from my birthdate indicates I was conceived on April 11, 1954, the date University of Cambridge computer scientist William Tunstall-Pedoe’s search engine True Knowledge has determined was the most boring day since the dawn of the 20th century.

The computer analysis, as reported on interestingfacts. com, has determined that nothing important happened on that Sunday, my conception notwithstanding.

But surely lots of things must have happened on April 11, 1954.

There was a general election in Belgium, some sporting events here and there, a coup in India that was possibly planned but not carried out until two days later, but reportedly no notable births or deaths, at least that’s what True Knowledge’s search of its 300 million facts concluded.

OK, April 11, 1954, may not have provided the excitement of America’s Bicentennial or a visit by Haley’s comet or even the much-anticipated total eclipses of 2017 or this past April 8. But nothing noteworthy happened on 4-11-54?

Since at the time I was nothing more than a twinkle in my parents’ eye, I’m not in a position to refute the day’s lackluster ranking in history.

I find solace in what geologists have dubbed “the Boring Billion,” the period from around 1.8 billion to 800 million years ago when the world seemed to stand still in terms of evolution, atmospheric chemistry and geologic formation. It’s as if Earth was on pause for a billion years. But then 530 million years ago, things started hopping when most major animal groups started to appear, according to the fossil record.

Apparently until April 11, 1954, came along. But I choose to embrace the idiom “from humble beginnings come great things.” After all, I know myself. I think I’m anything but dull. I do what I can to stand apart from the crowd.

In explaining my often colorful, even flamboyant clothing choices, my wife is fond of telling people that as a child I was scared by the NBC peacock. That may be why in high school I was known to wear a scarf around my neck — in retrospect, quite a dicey fashion statement in Waurika, a town just a little bigger than Vian — as well as platform shoes, it was the 1970s after all. By college, my fashion tastes had not diminished, as demonstrated by my wardrobe of bright, colorful floral shirts worn with a leisure suit. These days, it’s Hawaiian-print shirts — the more outlandish the better — that I wear daily from Memorial Day to Labor Day (I have 200 of them, so I can go quite awhile without repeating). And my I’m-anything-but-boring self-image may explain my predilection for the colorful, flashing dance floor lights and sparkly mirror balls of the disco era, which as far as I’m concerned, never really ended.

So while my conception may have occurred on the most boring day of the 20th century, it would seem I’ve been trying to make up for such an inauspicious beginning for the past seven decades.