Are you one, are you two... are you EIGHTY?

Today was my grandmother’s 80th birthday. We think. At least, this year her birthday was today. Officially she was born on August 9th, 1928 but that’s only what her birth certificate says. Like many people born in rural locations, her birth was never actually reported to government officials until someone had to go into town for something. It went something like, “Oh, the mule needs a new shoe and could you tell them we have another baby?” Due to this, the actual date of her birth is debatable. In addition to this, her native home of Puerto Rico has endured many a hurricane. These annual tropical storms destroy many crops but rarely do they do much harm to buildings as people there have learned from experience and build everything out of solid concrete. While buildings aren’t damaged, everything gets flooded, including the basements of government buildings that hold all sorts of records, including births. Thus, when the second copy of her birth certificate was written up, it had to be written from memory of an already disputed date.
I’m fairly certain there’s another unspoken reason my grandmother’s birthday is celebrated on any number of different days in the month of August. There’s an old superstition that jealous rivals and witches will curse you so that some terrible misfortune will befall you on your birthday. If you make your birthday on a different day, you can out smart them. Without getting into too much detail, I’ll simply say that it is plausible that there are people who would want to curse my grandmother. Either way, today she turned 80 and doesn’t look a day over 70, so she’s managed to out-fox all ill-wishers thus far. What can I say? She’s a pretty foxy lady.