I know Southern California is way laid back, so let me tell you we’re in February, the second month of the year, in case you don’t already know it. I have always had a little difficulty with this month. For one thing, it is hard to pronounce and spell. I tend to forget the “r” in the middle and out comes Febuary (my spell check is crashing again). I just don’t get why the namer of months couldn’t have come up with an easier name. Take May, for instance. There is no way to screw that up.
February not only is tough to spell, but it can’t even decide how many days it is. Give me a break! Either you are 28 days or 29 days. No other month behaves like that. Take May again. I apparently have something for that month. Every May is 31 days. You don’t have some years where May decides it’s 10 days, and other Mays that are 42 days. May is May — 31 days. That is all she wrote.
Now think about it. Every other month is either 30 or 31 days. But “oh no,” February has to be different. I believe in uniformity. All the allocator of days in a month had to do was shorten a couple of those 31-day months and, voila, we are regaining a sense of normalcy.
No, I don’t want to hear about some hoax started by the Chinese that says a common year has 365 days and a leap year 366 days, and that a leap year occurs every four years to help synchronize the calendar year with the solar year, or the length of time it takes the earth to complete its orbit about the sun, which is about 365¼ days. This is the same kind of bunk the Chinese are trying to spread about global warning.
So here are the real questions — if February insists on not changing its duration, are we better off when February is only 28 days or when it is a robust 29 days? And as the song “A Paradox” from Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” suggests, are people born on leap year only one fourth the age of people born any other time? I have mixed feelings about these thought provoking questions, but the older I get the more I like the extra day. I never know how many more days I have, so every one is precious, even if it means February has to be different.