I was born on a tuesday

Apropos of nothing, the guy comes over to where we sit at the bar.

“‘Scuse me guys, but this guy does a great bar trick.” He motions to another man, who stands aloof, his attention elsewhere. This friend is a slightly vacant looking man, eyes never fixing on you when he talks, always seeming to look at something just beyond you, blinking a lot.

“You tell him your birthday,” the first guy says, “and he can tell you the day you were born. He’s got the calendar cycles memorized.” He spins his fingers around to suggest a cycle.

A few of us try it, and, sure enough, after thinking for a moment, eyes to the ceiling, he offers the correct day. And then he rattles off when our respective next Saturday birthdays will be, other bits of calendaric trivia. The first guy, who has proffered his friend for our amusement, is soaking up the praise. The calendar man himself merely says, “Oh, thank you for the compliment,” when we share our amazement at his unique talent.

I think he was probably mildly autistic, but what I kept thinking about his slightly drunk friend, who presented him to us in the way that a ringmaster might present a performer, or a freak. Step right up, kiddies, be amazed by the Amazing Mr. Mental.

But the date guesser didn’t seem to feel used or even inconvenienced. The whole thing had the feeling of something, if not rehearsed, then at least performed over and over, in bar after bar.

“He just got back from Russia,” the ringmaster says. “Before that, he was in Europe, New Zealand, China.”

Before they left, he told me that my birthday would be a Friday, and that my next Saturday birthday would be next year. He said it will total confidence, as if he was telling me that apples are usually red and that the sun is the color of fire.

I checked after he left. About that last bit of prediction, he was actually completely wrong. Yet he had said it with the same confidence as his totally correct statements, as if, to him, there was no difference between the true and the not.