Triple-digit date 12/12/12 makes for a memorable birthday

Warehime said she began thinking about the odds of having a double birthday, like 12/12. Add to that the chances of being alive to see the triple-digit version, 12/12/12. It’s something that people with only 12 birthdates even have the potential to see.

“A couple of years ago, I realized it was going to be a triple-digit date,” she said — and she’s been planning ever since.

Warehime, an emergency room technician at Carlisle Regional Medical Center, said that 12/12/12 will be the last triple-digit birthday date for 89 years. The next will be Jan. 1, 2101 or 01/01/01.

Despite the odds, she discovered that she was one of four employees at the hospital with a 12/12 birthday.

Tara Mead, director of marketing and public relations at the hospital, said she hadn’t made the connection until the monthly luncheon to celebrate staff birthdays at the hospital.

She said the significance of this year’s date was lost in the anticipation of the milestone birthday she celebrated last year — her 40th. But now that 12/12/12 is close, it is exciting.

“Susan’s excitement is very infectious,” Mead said.

Warehime said she usually doesn’t do much for her birthday, but this year was different. If money weren’t a consideration, she said she’d go to Las Vegas just for the day or to the big concert for Hurricane Sandy relief at Madison Square Garden.

“I asked my husband for

fireworks,” she said. “I wanted snow with the fireworks, but he said he couldn’t control that part.”

Warehime joked that she didn’t ask for snow for the whole neighborhood, just for her house, leaving the door open for the creative use of spray snow to grant her birthday wish.

Dinner is also on the agenda. “He didn’t ask me where I wanted to go. He told me where we were going,” Warehime said.

Mead, on the other hand, doesn’t know what’s on tap for tomorrow’s celebrations. “I have no idea what my husband has planned,” she said. “I usually just leave it up to him.”

But she does know that she would eventually like to celebrate somewhere warm. When she lived in Connecticut, there was a three- or four-year stretch when there was freezing rain or snow on her birthday, she said.

Their colleague, medical-surgical nurse Colleena Benton, knew exactly where she would be when her birthday arrived — right in the middle of a 12-hour shift at the hospital. She said other people noticed the unusual date first and told her.

“It really went under the radar, honestly,” she said, adding that it might have been different on a “milestone birthday.”

Still, her birthday does come up in her work. She often tells patients if their birthday is on, or near, hers. Besides work, Benton said she would be with her family for her birthday, but “other than that, taking a nap,” she laughed.

There seems to be a bit of a gender split on the degree of excitement surrounding 12/12/12 birthdays.

Josh Barrick of Newville really didn’t think of it. “I just figured it was another day,” he said. “I don’t get excited about it.”

Still, he planned to go to Shady Maple Smorgasbord in Lancaster County today to celebrate.

Likewise, Scott Royer of Carlisle, said the date his family joked around about more was Dec. 21, the date of the supposed end of the world according to an ancient Mayan calendar.

He said he would be working at the service station, Royer’s Gulf, today just like any other day. “I celebrate, but I don’t get excited,” he said.