The Leap Year Blues

It's February out there. Oh yes, it's February.

How do I know? Because my normally sweet-natured, cooperative, mellow almost-three-year-old daughter had her official, week long, winter-cabin-fever "I'm not going to sleep, eat and be nuclear grumpy every moment" freak out.

And it was about Wednesday of the freakout while driving down the highway with crying tot in tow, that I remembered: "Oh yeah, it's February isn't it."

One of my favorite writers avoids the state of Pennsylvania at all costs because every time he crosses its borders something mysteriously always breaks down. (Cars, relationships, physical health) He will drive extra hours around the state just to save himself the trouble that will surely find him there.

I feel the same way about February, but I have not, as yet, found a way to avoid a whole month of the year. (I do however have one fond memory that takes place in this month, and that was when I first laid eyes on my beautiful wife, but knowing what month it was, I waited till March to ask her out)

There is an old saying (okay, I made it up and have been saying it for a while) that all the evidence that you need to believe in a merciful, loving God is in the fact that He made February with only twenty-eight days. (Actually, it was not the Lord, but those shiftless Gregorians who designed our current calendar)

And then, I hear that every four years they want to add another day to this most wretched of all months.

This is a bad idea.

If there is somehow (it must be magic) an extra day floating around out there why on earth would we give it to February? It's like entrusting those thousand dollars you were saving for a vacation to your gambling addicted roommate. It's akin to saying "you know what, I don't think that World War II thing was near long enough, why don't we tack on an extra year, make it go through '46" or "that national deficit isn't nearly big enough, let's put a couple of zeros onto that baby, really make some history here!"

And if there is some "magic" way to add a day to the calendar, then could those same folks somehow make the American Idol TV show disappear, professional baseball last all year and give me back all the hair that I've lost?

Actually, let's just do away with the month of February once and for all.

Here is what I suggest.

Let's divide up those twenty-eight days like this: We'll start by giving the other eleven months each one more day just for virtue of not being the month of February.

That leaves us with seventeen days.

Next, let's give June, July, and August each four more days, because come on, who would be against a longer summer?

Then let us reward October (my favorite month on account of all that foliage, and my birthday) with three more days and then let's randomly select oh, say April, to have two more days.

There it is; a nice even, well thought out plan to phase out February.

Oh, and that extra day every four years?

Put it anywhere you want...