Stop the presses! etc.

I assume you have had a chance to glance at my post entitled "The Four Seasons"?

Well, today I was in the supermarket and ran into ANOTHER woman with four children in one of those monstrous four-seat strollers. I told her about the woman whom I had met before, whose children had been born in different seasons and whose oldest was going to have his first birthday soon.

"Isn't that funny?" she said with a laugh. "That was my cousin! How funny that you should have met her. You know, these four children of mine (by a strange coincidence) were born on the same days as her four children!"

"The same days of the same YEAR?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," she said.

"So your oldest isn't a year old yet either?"

"Not quite," she said.

I found out from her that the same constraints that applied to the other lady applied to her as well - she had never been outside the U.S., had not used odd reproductive technology for any of her children, all her children were her own biological children.

"So, do you call your children the 'four seasons' also?" I asked as she was getting ready to leave.

"No," she said, "I actually call them the FIVE seasons. The youngest one isn't here with me - I can only fit four in the stroller, you see. But she was born in a different season from her next older sibling."

Well, explain THAT!

And by the way: none of the babies in this problem or the other one were born on Feb. 29....

P. Kimball

American College of Healthcare Executives

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