Delta Birthdays

In maintaining a blog and sharing my steps along this Delta road, I've tried to document life as it is here, for better or worse. Anything less wouldn't be an honest story. The complexities born from humanity are often funny, sometimes tragic, and it is interesting how they are manifested in different ways in different cultures. Some differences are little, some big, and as far as I'm concerned, are all worth noting. It is in this thread that we come to today's entry: birthdays.

Birthdays have always been something to celebrate. A year older, a year wiser - it is an opportunity to look back and reflect on the past year. It is also an opportunity to be celebrated by loved ones far and near. Before moving to the Delta, I figured I had seen all there was to see in birthdays. Cake, parties, and presents are all things commonly associated with the birthday tradition and you can spice it up if you'd like and go to mexican restaurant where you typically wear a sombrero and are serenaded by the wait staff, or a hibachi grill where they fling shrimp in your mouth, but again, all pretty standard stuff.

Then I came here. The tradition here is not only unique, but I think is dangerous to females. When a female student has a birthday, instead of bringing her presents, other students pin cash to them. I don't know if they show up with just a pin, or if they start with a base sum to be contributed to, but throughout the day, students give cash to the female student, and she pins it to her shirt. As you can imagine, with a popular student there is a large amount of cash pinned to her shirt. Literally the only thing keeping this money from flying away by wind or thief is a safety pin. One swift snatch and the birthday is no longer as happy.

The first time I noticed this, I was alarmed. I saw a girl walking around school with $20 bills attached to her shirt. Not wanting to seem ignorant, I didn't question as it seemed perfectly normal to everyone else. Later on, when talking to a roommate, I recounted the confusion to which he responded, "oh yeah, it's her birthday". What? There are girls walking around with large sums of money safety pinned to their shirt, and the tradition is honored by friend and foe alike? I've heard several stories of students getting jumped for the cash in their pockets. Sad, downright low, but apparently the higher code of the Delta makes the money pinned to each girl's shirt the most sacred of currency?

I polled a couple of classes, to see how much money had been pinned to their shirt at any one time. Some responses were: "$32 dollars bucks", "$60", "$55", "$20", "between $100-$200", "$0 - I never pinned money to my chest because it like advertising how much money you got", "$70", "no more than $400", "$228 money for my birthday". Fascinating.

As I said, human complexities are manifested in many ways. I may never understand this tradition or how it got started, but it beats a sombrero at Chi-Chi's any day of the week. Happy birthday to you, Delta girls.