I was born on Oct. 13.

I am not just saying this to remind my friends when to get me a gift. Oct. 13 always falls on or near Columbus Day, now considered by some people to be the most evil day on the calendar, surpassing even Income Tax Day.

This year is the 500th anniversary of Columbus doing whatever it was he did and getting a lot of people angry, killed or used as mascots for sports teams because of it. Columbus Day falls on Oct. 12 this year. I missed it by one day.

In a way, I'm disappointed. It sure would be nice to have my birthday on Columbus Day. Then again, if anyone saw me celebrating that day they might demand an explanation, or worse, monetary compensation.

This Columbus Day thing is tough to figure out. Celebrating the man who symbolizes the exploitation of so many seems like an incredible offense to lots of people. Ask the Rose Bowl officials.

This year the Rose Bowl parade committee chose Columbus as its theme and Columbus's direct descendant as its grand marshal. Bad move. Officials seriously rethought their decision after many Native Americans protested, and decided to have co-grand marshals, choosing Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the only Native American member of Congress, to balance things out.

Although the Rose Bowl's effort was rather half-hearted, they were right in that both cultures should be recognized in Columbus Day celebrations.

We don't have to celebrate Columbus, or the colonization of America or the exploitation of the Native Americans. What needs to be recognized is that 500 years ago the world changed in ways so profound the results will probably never stop being felt. It may not be something to celebrate, but it's something that should be remembered and taught.

After all, most high school students probably don't know which hemisphere they're in, let alone its history. If Columbus Day can help renew interest in history (other than the Kennedy assassination), then give it as much attention as possible.

But make sure history gets defined truthfully this time, and not according to the little song they used to teach us about "Columbus sailed the ocean blue" and that story with the queen's jewelry.

So exactly who was this Columbus guy, anyway? We should probably figure this out before we decide what to do about his holiday.

Christopher Columbus used to be one of my heroes. This was back when people said he discovered America, instead of just bumping into some island by accident. I thought Columbus was an explorer and adventurer, like most of my heroes -- Sir Edmund Hillary, Daniel Boone, Neil Armstrong and Han Solo.

Years later, it turns out Columbus wasn't such a great guy after all. He sure wasn't very PC --calling the people he met Indians instead of Native Americans. Didn't the guy read the paper?

He didn't "discover" America. After all, the Native Americans knew it was there all along, and the Vikings and maybe even the Chinese beat him to it. The poor guy never even made it to Florida, thereby missing out on a trip to Walt Disney World.

He turned out to have a huge ego, no business sense and maybe even no sense of direction. I bet he even made obscene noises with his armpits in mixed company.

I wonder why they never taught me this stuff in elementary school.

I don't mean to make light of what happened because of Columbus's trip. It was the beginning of one of our world's worst episodes of genocide, which continues to this day. Uncounted numbers of Native Americans were wiped out and other races were forced into slavery because of colonization. Columbus himself took part in this atrocity at the beginning, killing and enslaving the people he found.

Columbus has become a symbol of all the oppression and hurt in America. After all, he started it. It must be his fault.

So let's get rid of him. Let's erase him from the history books, take his day away and change the name of that city in Ohio to Bo Jackson or someone everybody likes.

Or we could be realistic for a change. Columbus was just a man. He has a great place in history because he did something important. If we took away the places of people in history just because we found out they did some things wrong in their lives, we'd be left with history books containing maybe Abraham Lincoln and Gandhi (and I bet we'd soon find scandals about them, too.)

Since his voyage, Columbus has mainly been viewed the way people wanted him to be. He is either a great explorer, the great exploiter, a master seaman, an environmental disaster, an incredible visionary or a real jerk, depending on what people want to think.

Let's just all agree that he's dead and move on to the more important things, like fixing everything we've managed to screw up in the last 500 years and making sure the things we got right don't get blown away.

The two hemispheres were bound to meet and develop a permanent relationship. Now, 500 years later, we can look back on our countless mistakes and achievements and try to learn from what happened.

So even if you forget my birthday this year (forgot it already, didn't you), remember Columbus Day. Give it a new name if you have to, but don't let a momentous moment in history go unrecognized.