February…God’s Only Mistake?

I am firmly in the grip of February. I have written many times of the phenomenon that is the second month of the Gregorian calendar. It is the month best known for an Al Capone inspired massacre in Chicago, which tells you everything you need to know. It is the shortest month of the year that feels like the longest. It has the worst weather. It is the month when football ends and baseball hasn’t started yet. Spring is not just around the corner. Enduring February is like standing in a line at the DMV for a month…you’re waiting for something, you just can’t remember what. There’s Valentine’s Day, which feels like a cruel joke. By the time President’s Day comes around you can hardly contain the euphoria. Of course this year we have the Winter Olympics to distract us. Yes, that international sporting event run this year by Communist China which features empty stands, crying athletes and isolation hotels. Perfect.

This year it just so happens that February has me reading Biblical history, the sort found in 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles. This seems right and proper. There’s lots of names, lists of stuff I could have sworn I just read last week, repetition of stories already told. Like Groundhog Day, another February staple, whereby we are asked to believe that how much more winter we must endure hangs on whether or not Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow. Its as if the entire universe has lost its collective mind. This morning my weatherman warned of something called freezing fog and I thought, why not?

I realize that this all sounds quite defeatist. You are probably thinking that I need to adjust my attitude, try to accentuate the positive, start viewing the glass as half full. I tried that, but the thing slipped out of my hand, water went everywhere, and I sliced my foot open on the broken glass. 

Then, there’s Leap Year, a perfectly Februrarian kind of thing. Could something that happens once every four years— which confuses everyone and serves no discernible purpose beyond screwing people born on that day out of a proper birthday—happen in any other month? No.

But, no matter how pointless February is, every year it shows up right on time. Each year I end up writing a snarky blog about it, and each year I make it through. I’ve always thought that if I ever end up coming down with COVID it would be in February because…well, just because. Come to think of it, my last colonoscopy was in February. I’m due another one, Pam keeps reminding me. The irony involved in getting colonoscopies in February are truly cosmic.