ACTUAL CODE I HAD TO WRITE BECAUSE PHP'S DATE PARSING IS GFXJDNVJVXJHZGVFHDSVXFHZFHSZDBMDBGMNGDFCVNG

american-date.php

<?php
/**
 * Convert a date to the "American" date format.
 *
 * While one may assume this function appropriately rearranges the
 * date format to follow the American MM/DD/YYYY format, in reality
 * and by intention, this function is very naive. All it does is replace
 * all dashes and periods with a forward-slash, preserving all ordering
 * and leaving that up to the caller.
 * This behavior is to allow PHP to correctly parse dates in the American
 * format, as it foolishly uses the delimiter to determine the parse format
 * rather than using the data in the string.
 *
 * @see {http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php#refsect1-function.strtotime-notes|Third note box}
 * @param {string} $date - Any acceptable date format.
 * @returns {string} The same date format but with forward-slash deliminators.
 */
function convertToAmericanDate($date) {
    return str_replace(['-', '.'], '/', $date);
}