It’s no coincidence that there is the same number of whole weeks in a Gregorian calendar year as in a standard deck of playing cards. Each week corresponds to a card, and knowing the card for the week in which you were born can reveal a great deal, so to speak, about your fate. Consider the following examples…if you dare:
January 1-7: Ace of Spades
If you were born in the first seven days of the year, you’re likely to be a natural with a shovel and destined to be a gravedigger — at the very least, a ditch digger. Gravedigger is, of course, a time-honored profession (to say nothing of it as a pastime). Indeed, a gravedigger features prominently in one of the most famous scenes of one of the most famous tragic English plays of the past 450 years! (In the same vein, there’s a scene in one of the most beloved comic American films of the 20th century in which a wise old man says, “Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too.”)
April 9-15: Two of Hearts
While no single human is born with a pair of hearts, it is your destiny to have two tickers, and this inescapable eventuality is likely to come about in one or the other of two ways. In cases of extreme cardiomyopathy, rather than receiving a new heart in place of the one you started with and ruined, you might undergo a medical procedure in which a second heart is grafted onto the first, to share the work. That’s one way. The other way is that you might wake up one morning and discover that overnight you were transformed, Gregor Samsa-like, into an octopus. Octopi have multiple hearts.
May 21-27: Eight of Hearts
You will be a cannibal, with a particular penchant for internal organs, if you aren’t already.
September 17-23: Queen of Clubs
When you get to high school, you’re going to be a busy, busy girl. (And after high school, you’re never going to run out of stories to tell about high school!) You’ll be the first to arrive and the last to go home each day. You’ll be in the marching band and on the cheerleading squad. You’ll be a mathlete and a non-mathlete. You’ll be on the chess team, the debate team, the chess debate team, the student council, and the yearbook committee. You’ll be exhausted by the time you graduate and you’ll probably need to take a year off to “find yourself” before starting college.
September 24-30: King of Clubs
Same as the previous week, except you’re a dude.
Trumptober $-$$$$$$$: The Donald
You were born into privilege, and in privilege you will remain, growing ever more politically connected as you win ever more friends and influence ever more people…until ultimately you attain a position of such global power that you are able to change two of humanity’s most established institutions — the Christian calendar and the standard playing card deck of the Western world — to include references to yourself.
December 10-16: Jack of Diamonds
If you’re born between December 10th and December 16, odds are that you will legally change your name, if necessary, to “John O’Diamond,” but people will call you “Jack.”
December 31: Joker
Born on the last day of the year, were you? Think that’s funny? Ruining New Year’s Eve for your parents and everyone else who had to be there at your delivery? Well, that’s why you don’t get a regular card: you don’t deserve one. You and the weirdos born on February 29. You’re all outcasts, rarely useful, cast aside and forgotten by civilized society — discarded, if you will — as you should be.
