I was in the third grade when I realized I was special.  I couldn't believe that I had overlooked this fact for so many years -- all nine of them!  It was in the middle of class, but when I made this discovery I had to fight the urge to raise my hand and tell the teacher and all my classmates.  But I didn't.  I kept it to myself for a few minutes, and made sure I hadn't made a mistake.  I double checked my spelling to make sure I hadn't somehow switched the letters.  Nope.  The data was in, and it was official:  I was special.

It came to me while looking at a calendar that listed the months of the year.  And that's it.  It was just staring me in the face.  The first six months of the year were nothing -- they were useless to me.  The magic began with the month of July:

J uly
A ugust
S eptember
O ctober
N ovember
D ecember

The first letter of each month spelled my name!  Wow!  How amazing is that!   Sure, there were other kids who were named after months like April, May, and June, but it took six consecutive months to make my name!

But it was the month of December that put me over the top.  You see, the name "Jason" was as common in my class as "Jeeves" is for butlers.  It was a dime a dozen.  In fact, a whopping 10% of our class was named Jason.  I shared this alphabetic peculiarity with 4 or 5 others.  What made me extra special was that I was the only Jason whose last name started with a "D".  And in a class full of Jasons, of course I always signed my assignments as "Jason D.".  For centuries, my name had been plastered on calendars in every school, church, office building, and checkbook.  And now that I knew this fact, I was determined that it would be a secret no more.

Eventually, I got up and showed the teacher what I had discovered.  She said something like, "Oh, that's nice."  So much for being special.  Ever since, all my attempts to use this fact to gain fame and fortune have failed.  I'm just like everybody else:  my name and a dollar will get me a Bojangles iced tea.