Assignment 4: "The Day I was Born"

I admit that one of my favorite stories is the one that my mother told me more than a thousand times when I was little, the story of my birth. Just like I enjoyed some of the stories I remember from my childhood I liked listening to the story of the day I was born told by my mother, even more than my favorite book back then, The Three Little Pigs. 

The story of my birth was so special that I made my mother repeat it again and again. I don’t know what I liked more about it, if the adventure that my parents lived the day I came to this world, or the way my mother used to tell me the story, in first person, living each part of the story as if the time that had passed was just a couple of weeks. Today, although this story is still very special to me, there are other things I find more interesting about that day, some of the important events that occurred around the day of my birth.

It was October 8, 1985 in Monterrey, the third largest city in Mexico and the base of many significant international corporations. The city’s population was 1,913,075 in 1980 and 2,213,77 in 1990 according to the 2009 official historical statistics, so I must have been around the inhabitant 2,000,000.

    

The day I was born my mom was making dinner waiting for my father to come back home from work, she was listening to music on the radio and it is fair to assume it was a song from the album "Reflexiones" by Jose Jose. It was the #1 album in Billboard’s Latin Pop Albums from January to October that year. My father arrived home when she started to feel weird, by the experience she gained with her three previous pregnancies, she deducted the time was about to come, it was time for me to be born.

My dad started to feel nervous asking what to do while my mom told him to be calm and help her pack her bag while she went to take a shower. It’s still funny to hear my dad say he could not believe how calm she was that she even decided to have dinner before going to the hospital. My mom explains she knew it was going to be a long, exhausting night and she knew she was going to need that energy. After dinner everything was a hassle, they had to get my brother and two sisters ready to drop them off at my aunt’s house, my dad could not find the keys and the contractions increased. “But I was happy, relaxed and calm” tells me my mom, she knew I was fine and she was prepared for what she had to do, she knew I was ready to be born that day.

That same day I was born but in the United States somebody else was feeling somewhat like my mom, with the difference that her son was going to become a singer-songwriter, record producer, voice actor and choreographer, and I am none of those yet. Bruno Mars also arrived to thisworld on October 8, 1985. In his hometown, Honolulu Hawaii, his mom probably listened at Money For Nothing by Dire Straits playing on the radio on her way to the hospital, which was the top song of Billboard’s “The Hot 100” that week.

While my mom and Bernie San Pedro Bayot (Bruno Mars' mother) were giving birth to their sons, people in the United States were reading comics as the one below, published by The Washington Post that same day.

On October 8, 1985, the day my mom was giving birth to a healthy, 7.5lbs baby, people in the United States were making lines outside the movie theaters to watch the number one hit of the season, Back to the Future. William Hurt was accepting the Academy Award forBest Actor in a Leading Role that year and the Best Picture award went to “Out of Africa” and "The Mammoth Hunters" by Jean M. Auel was at the top of the best selling books.

 

 

1985 was a good year in Monterrey, Mexico, not only was I born that year but the city’s soccer team, and also my all time favorite soccer team won the national tournament.

That same year was rich in political history for some other countries, Brazil was electing its new president, Tancredo Neves, ending the 21-year military rule. The popular song "We Are the World"  by artist such as Michael Jackson was recorded in support of Africa, Nelson Mandera rejected an offer of freedom from the South African government and the Minolta 7000 was released, the first SLR with an integrated autofocus system.

It is a blessing to have been born on October 8, 1985 to some exemplary parents, I don’t think I will ever ask again my mom to tell me the story of the day I was born, but this story will remain with me forever. Now I have learned that the year I was born is not only special because it’s my birthday but because of the many events all over the world that happened around that period of time.