Pop Psychology Nonsense

Those games on Facebook with your birthday and your name and maybe you can figure out which house at Hogwarts you would belong to, well, I place them in about the same category as the horoscope or ghosts. I don’t believe in them but don’t disparage those that do. I find them relatively harmless and, while not a great conversational starter, better than nothing.
But I came across one this morning (which I’ve come across probably a hundred times before) which sparked a reaction and that reaction is this blog that I’m writing right now. It said ‘The song that was number 1 on your 14th birthday is the song that determines your life,’ which made me say “Hey, wait a minute. I determine my own life.”
That’s not entirely true, of course. there are many things that determine a person’s life. Our parents, our place of birth, our nationality, ethnicity, gender and native language, our inherited traits, our birth order perhaps, and a lot of other things later on, our teachers (both the good ones and the bad ones), the other kids in the neighborhood, all of the random things that happen at random moments and, of course, the culture of the moment. So, music does play some role, among other factors, but it’s not the only factor. In addition, the 14th birthday thing is very arbitrary as we all mature at different rates, and just because a song was number one does not mean that it had any personal meaning for you.
Anyway, #1 on my 14th birthday was ‘Honey’ by Bobby Goldsboro. I don’t even remember it.