Evidently, my parents are not the only ones unable to resist the pull of a free meal. Denny’s, one of my father’s favorite American restaurants, serves free birthday meals. Denny’s assumes, of course, that nobody would go to eat a birthday meal alone. It is fair to expect that a person celebrating his birthday would bring along a few paying friends. Of course, there is an exception to every rule, and Kazem is his name.

My father has no idea of his exact birthdate. Whenever a child was born in his family, someone made a notation in the family Koran. The flaw in this system became apparent when someone lost the Koran. My father and his siblings have had to rely on one another’s memories to approximate their ages.

“He was born the year of the flood, which makes him seventyfive.”

“No, that can’t be right. He was born the year I learned how to read, so he’s seventy-seven.”

“No, he was born the year all the chickens died. He’s seventy-one, maybe seventy-two.”

When my parents were coming to America, my father had to choose a birthdate. Ever the practical man, he decided on March 18, my mother’s birthday. This way, he figured, filling out paperwork would be considerably easier since he would only have to remember one date. His system was flawless until Denny’s marketing gurus started offering those free birthday meals. Every March 18, my parents would experience the same scene. “Isn’t that adorable?” the waitress always said. “Matching birthdays! Hey, Oscar, check this out!” To get their free chicken-fried steak, my parents had to endure the inquisition.

“How did you two meet?”

“When did you realize you have the same birthday?”

“That is the cutest thing I have ever seen.”

Rather than go into the whole “We somehow lost the Koran and that’s why we have the same birthday” story, my parents just smiled and hoped the waitress would go away. Eventually, my father decided to go to Denny’s alone on his birthday, thus avoiding the entire “Ain’t it romantic to have the same birthday?” scenario.

When my father retired, he found himself with lots of free time. Retirement traditionally brings out men’s true passions: golfing, fishing, spelunking. Ever since he retired, what was once a mere pastime of my father’s has now become a full-time mania that can be summed up in one word: time-shares.