According to my birth certificate I was born in England on July 12, 1947.

I’m on the right (of course)

One photo of me submitted by my mother to a “beautiful baby contest” suggests that I was born on July 13, 1947.  But it is probably a mistake resulting from the disorientation of having four baby boys in five years.

In the 1970’s during my “Simon Sunshine” days I started celebrating my birthday on July 4 because it was a holiday.  In fact two of my tag lines in those days were:  “Why do you think it is a holiday?” and “Why do you think we moved to America?”  When I moved to California in 1973 at the DMV I filled out the license application with my July 4th birthday and they didn’t check.  So my CA drivers license said July 4th.

For the next 30 years we celebrated my birthday on July 4th.  At some point I told Nurit and eventually I told the girls.  But generally the world thought my birthday was July 4th and celebrated with abandon.

There was one problem.  My passport still said July 12.  Until 9/11/2001 this discrepancy was unimportant but with the increased insecurity I started to get nervous.  Sure enough sometime in 2003 while I was driving back to the USA from Mexicali, Mexico a border patrol agent compared my passport and my drivers license and noticed the discrepancy.  I spent a while in secondary inspection and resolved to correct the error.

The next time my drivers license came up for renewal I took my documents down to the DMV with me to change back to July 12.  The clerk didn’t even look at them she just took my word for it and made the correction on my license.

So “Simon Birthers” give up.  I misled you so that I could have one of  my longest running jokes.  Not really a joke more like a “leg pull”  By the way the negative result is I am not eligible to be the President of the USA, the United Kingdom or Mexico.  The positive result is we had a lot of great July 4th parties and lots of people know my birthday is in July sometime.