A Petition to Cancel February, Permanently
February, ugh-a month so bad it’s reduced to 28 days. It’s also anchored by the holiday with the worst candy. How many teeth have cracked on those little hearts that say “Be mine”? Beware is more like it.
The worst thing about February is that it’s cold and bleak and generally unconducive to peeing outside. I know bathroom humor isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but the fact of the matter is that February is the last month you’d want to relieve yourself on the roadside in an emergency situation. And yet the irony is that nature calls more frequently in cold weather, which is another reason to hate February. Apparently, because humans sweat less when cold, the human body has to route more fluids through the bladder. But the bladder has already contracted its capacity to hold liquid because, well, the heater in the truck has quit working and it’s cold and many things contract when cold, including the bladder. Thus, the bladder is now, at best, the size of a large walnut and completely incapable of storing the two gallons of coffee imbibed to stay warm. All these factors, added to the fact that there’s no gas station bathroom within miles to patronize, mean that bladder has now commandeered control of the truck, engaged the emergency flashers, and brought the truck to a screeching halt on the roadside beside a patch of woods.
Furthermore, we ought to know something is wrong with February when we start the month by relying on groundhogs to forecast our weather. It’s a pretty good indicator that we, as humanity, have given up when we transfer meteorological decision-making to the rodent that lives in the road pipe. My wife’s poppaw, who is eighty-five years old, can remember a better age when groundhogs had yet to inhabit every culvert in the countryside. He said he never used to see groundhogs growing up, and then, all the sudden, they were everywhere, poking their heads up along the roadside. Don’t get me wrong, groundhogs aren’t dumb animals, as anyone who has had to battle one in a garden can attest, but only in February would southerners in the greater Charlotte viewing area get so sick and tired of Larry Sprinkle’s dreary forecasts that we’d put our hope in a rodent from above the Mason-Dixon line.
Thus, February is so bad that humanity unites in general dislike of the month, if for no other reason than the “r” in the middle of February is a completely superfluous letter whose sole purpose is to make us feel like idiots and second guess the spelling of a word we learned in first grade.
Anyway, you can probably tell I don’t like February, and I’m sorry if you were one of the people who lost the calendrical lottery and were born during the month. But, let’s face it, you would benefit most from canceling February because, with it wiped from existence, you’d never grow older. So if you’d like to make the world a better place, please sign the petition by leaving your name (or favorite fake name, I’m not picky) in the comments and then distribute this petition far and wide, so we can rid the calendar from the scourge of February. Even if we can’t get February omitted entirely, maybe we can negotiate and at least get the “r” omitted from the middle, which would be a big win for the universe if you ask me.
Originally published at https://misfitfarmer.com on February 4, 2021.
