A debate broke out among a group of friends over an event from the distant past. The friends quickly split into two camps—one narrated a certain historical account, while the other offered a version that contradicted it entirely.
As for me, I remained silent, listening intently to both sides. What caught my attention was that each side was absolutely certain their version was the truth itself, speaking with such confidence that one would think they had actually lived through those ancient times and personally knew its figures.

As I kept turning my ear from one to the other, and after a long, fruitless argument where neither could convince the other, they all turned to me and said:

— “Why are you so quiet? Tell us what you think—are we right, or are they?”

Before answering, I asked them to listen to my story first. Then I began:

In my country, it’s customary for newborns to be registered with a date of birth different from their actual birth date, for various reasons. Sometimes it would coincide with a sibling’s birthday, or the beginning of a new year, or to meet the legal age for school enrollment, among other motives. But most commonly, parents would register their child at the civil registry weeks after birth and simply use the date of registration as the official birthday.

That’s what my father did when I was born.
On paper, I was born on the 18th of September.
But the first time I discovered this discrepancy was when I received my first ID card at the age of fourteen. Until then, I had always celebrated my birthday on the 3rd of September—because that’s what my parents had told me when I was a little boy.

I asked my father back then if he was sure I was born on the 3rd of September, and being a man who loved to joke, he laughed and said 😂:

— “Don’t make me doubt myself, boy! You’re messing with my memory with these strange questions. And why do you even care about this?”

For years after that, I adopted the same mindset and stopped caring. My birthday meant little to me—just like many people from my country, where a birthday is just another ordinary day, unnoticed by society at large.

But when I moved to Germany, my “dual birthday” was viewed as something strange. After all, logic dictates that a person is born only once.
One day at work, this oddity even led to me being accused of forging my identity papers, when my colleagues noticed that Facebook celebrated my birthday on a day different from what was written on my official documents.

That incident prompted me to revisit the matter I had long ignored, hoping to uncover the truth.
With my father gone, the only reference I had left was my mother’s memory.
So I asked her if she was certain I was born on the 3rd of September. She replied 🙄:

— “Of course! What kind of question is that? Do you think a mother forgets the day her child was born?”

— “Do you remember what day of the week it was?” I asked.

— “It was a Tuesday,” she answered with full confidence 🙂.

— “No, Mom… it was a Thursday.”

She quickly corrected herself 😯:
— “Yes yes, that’s right! It was a Thursday.”

To be honest, I don’t trust this kind of memory—what I call “manufactured memory.”
It’s a type of recollection shaped by suggestion and self-persuasion. This artificial memory tends to grow stronger with age, and I had wanted to test just how much my mother trusted her memory.

That moment confirmed to me that I couldn’t rely on her either. Because, in fact, the 3rd of September that year was neither a Tuesday nor a Thursday. It was a Wednesday.

That was when I gave up all hope of ever knowing the truth that would satisfy me.
So here I stand before you—alive and well—but I don’t know when I was actually born.

After I finished, one of the friends looked at me and asked 🤔:

— “And what does any of that have to do with what we asked you?”

— “What I’m trying to tell you is this:
If I can’t even trust my own birth date or know the truth about it,
how can any of you speak with such certainty about events that happened thousands of years ago?”