My Thoughts on February
January is finally over. It’s been a struggle for an old man like me. I still walk four miles every day, or every day I can. The weather this January has been brutal – there was a week when the high temperature didn’t breath the 20-degree (F) mark. And let’s talk about snow and ice. Nothing is more challenging at my age than gingerly negotiating the ice and snow on the trail. Trust me, I know. A few years ago I fell on the ice and broke some bones in my shoulder. It took months of physical therapy to overcome that bit of stupidity.
Now comes February, the longest month of the year.
The calendar says that February is the shortest month but it seems like the longest month to me. February this year, like most years, has twenty-eight days. By the time it is over, it will seem like sixty-two days; at least to this old codger.
According to the calendar, spring in my neck of the woods begins on March 20th. But where I live it doesn’t really begin until sometime in late April. Some years it takes until May to get underway.
When spring doesn’t begin until April or May and winter starts creeping into my little town in mid-October, that doesn’t leave much time for summer. And summers lately have been brutal… sweltering humid days and muggy nights, more challenges for this old curmudgeon.
I digress…February is a cruel, cold month. It is the mean, odious stepmother of months. It leads us into March – when spring is supposed to begin. March is nothing but a big tease.
The calendar keeps telling me that spring begins on March 20th. But I know better. I was born at night, but not last night. Spring does not begin in March. At least not here in my little town.
February is a month of wall-to-wall clouds. It’s dreary, damp, cold, gloomy, and usually dressed in snow and ice. February is a month of ugly weather. It’s a tease. February wants us to believe spring is just a crocus away.
February lies.
We have sixty-two days of February to get through, each day a slog through windy cold days full of snow, mush, ice, and mud under never-ending gray skies.
I have to deal with January, the second longest month of the year and I tolerate it. But I hate February. The best thing we have going for us in February around my little town is waiting for the world’s largest rat, who lives in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to tell us how many more weeks of winter we have left. I don’t need a big rat to tell me, I already know.
Here’s my prediction: We have at least ten more weeks of winter left.
Now you’re all thinking I’m the big rat, aren’t you?
If you live in the northern parts of the northern hemisphere, I’m sure you can empathize with me. If you live in Australia, New Zealand, or someplace else in the southern hemisphere, bear with me. I want all of you living in the southern hemisphere to know I empathize with you – because you’ve got problems with February too, even though you may not know it.
Did you ever think that you’ve been cheated out of three days of summer? February falls during your summer season. So, you get cheated out of three days of summer.
At least our last full month of summer has 31 days. Whereas yours only has 28 — except, of course, during leap years. All those Downunder must relish leap years. Leap years add another day to your summer.
I hate leap years. They make February sixty-three days long instead of “just” sixty-two.
February does have some bright spots but only if you work for the government, the schools, or the banks. Because if you’re one of those lucky souls, you love February even though the sun never shines and the deep, damp, February cold seeps into every membrane of your body. You’re lucky. You get yet another day off in February, “Presidents’ Day”.
Presidents’ Day is a holiday for you, but not for the rest of us poor working stiffs.
And, while it might be called Presidents’ Day, I have never yet met anyone who sits around and ponders the honorable deeds, heroics, or exploits of George or Abraham on that day. There used to be 2 “Presidents’ Days” – one for Abraham Lincoln on February 12th, and one for George Washington on February 22nd, but the powers that be decided to roll them all into one.
I’ll bet that most of you who work for the government, schools, or banks, will be eagarly looking through newspapers looking for Presidents’ Day Sales. Isn’t that true?
I’ll bet that not too many of you get that day off and will spend it cogitating and pontificating about the great American presidents or attending ceremonies honoring them. It looks like Target, Wal-Mart, Rural King 🙂 And other giant retailers win – while poor old George and Abraham once again have been relegated to the role of excuses for even more “sales” and days off from work.
Some of you, mostly female I’m betting, find another notoriously bright spot stuck smack dab in the middle of February. It’s called “Valentine’s Day”.
It’s supposed to be a day of romance, but, in my curmudgeonly mind, it’s a way for Hallmark, American Greetings, and other large purveyors of cardboard poetry to make oodles of wampum.
According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion Valentine’s cards are sent every year. This makes Valentine’s Day the second biggest “card-sending” holiday of the year – right behind Christmas when 2.6 billion cards are sent. Eighty-five percent of all Valentine’s Day cards are sent by women.
Well? Facts are facts!
And then, of course, the candy, candles, “romantic items” and other Valentine’s Day goodies that fill store shelves from the day after Christmas through the 14th of February.
Sigh. To my mind, this Valentine’s Day ruse is a marketer’s dream come true. Money, not “romance” is the engine that drives Valentine’s Day.
Am I too cynical? Maybe. But then again, I have my reasons. I’m old. I’m cynical. I’ve seen it all.
Whenever I think of Valentine’s Day, I think of myself as a fifth-grader. I was not attractive or popular. I was a fat kid, OK?
I was certainly no Beau Brummel. Either. My mom had just died a few months earlier and I desperately needed attention. Even more than most ten-year-old kids. I began (pathetically) hoping that some of the girls in my fifth-grade class would feel sorry for me and send me Valentine’s Day cards. Isn’t that sad? Pitiable even.
Of course, very few if any of the girls did. I recall a song by Janis Ian called “At Seventeen” and one of the lines in that song is “For those of us who knew the pain, of Valentines that never came…”.
And, in case you think I’m somehow anti-romantic or picking on women here, I’m not. One of the worst things ever foisted upon the world is the “Super Bowl”. Here we have a football game interrupted by five-minute commercials, one-hour halftimes, and ridiculous TV timeouts that are over five minutes long.
It’s a game that is more hype than contest, more glitter than substance. Most of us cannot even recall who won the last Super Bowl. And all the beautiful people are in attendance.
I like football — especially college football — and I watch a lot of games during the football season. I often look forward to relaxing on a Saturday afternoon watching college football.
So, besides the interminably long string of sunless, damp, cold, windy, snowy, dreary days that February dishes up, there is that ephemeral, tantalizing thought of spring on the not-to-distant horizon. It’s just a tease. It’s a long way until spring blossoms around here.
I always try to accept things as they come – what choice do I have? However, I have a difficult time accepting February. It’s the one month of the year that has no redeeming qualities – except that it brings us closer to spring.
As of today, there are forty-eight more days until the vernal equinox – the astronomical first day of spring. What do astronomers know about spring? I figure spring is at least 75 days away.
January ends and February begins.
February is the longest month of the year.