by Richard Timothy | Feb 16, 2012 | I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
With Valentine’s Day/Single Awareness Day/Don’t Forget to be Romantic at Least Once This Year Day over and done with I thought I’d take a look at entire month of February for today’s Smirk. February is a peculiar month in that it is the only one that is constantly mispronounced, but when you actually pronounce it correctly it sounds rather funny. I am referring to the “ru”, I know when I pronounce it I say Febuary (no “r”), and if I hear someone actually pronounce the “r” when they say it, it just does not sound right. Pronunciations aside February is a very friendly month that offers quite a number of social event options.
I did know that February was Black History Month, but when I started researching this, I also learned that February is:
- American Heart Month
- National Dental Month
- Chocolate Lover’s Month
- National Bird Feeding Month
Yep the entire month is dedicated to the remembering the contributions of African-Americans in U.S. and world history, being reminded that heart disease is the number one killer of women, but to help you deal with that the month is also dedicated to eating more chocolate, but not to worry because this month is also dedicated to all things pertaining to dental health. And to top it all off, along with buying a new toothbrush with you collection of chocolate don’t forget to purchase some bird feed, because February has also gone to the birds.
I wish I could say that is all, but once I got started I researching, more and more “National Month” titles popped up for the month of February. Here’s a list of what I found before calling off my search, I honestly would not be surprised if there are more. February is also:
- Adopt A Rescued Rabbit Month
- AMD/Low Vision Awareness Month
- Bake for Family Fun Month
- Berry Fresh in the Sunshine State Month
- Creative Romance Month
- Deaf History Month
- Fabulous Florida Strawberry Month
- Festival of Camellias Month
- From Africa to Virginia Month
- Great American Pies Month
- Human Relations Month
- International Boost Self-Esteem Month
- Library Lovers Month
- Marfan Syndrome Awareness Month
- Marijuana Awareness Month
- Mental Retardation Awareness Month
- National Boost-Your-Self-Esteem Month
- National Canned Food Month
- National Care About Your Indoor Air Month
- National Cherry Pie Month
- National Children’s Dental Health Month
- National Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Awareness Month
- National Condom Month
- National Craft Month
- National Get To Know an Independent Real Estate Broker Month
- National Grapefruit Month
- National Hot Breakfast Month
- National Laugh-Friendly Month
- National Mend A Broken Heart Month
- National Multiple Sclerosis Education and Awareness Month
- National Parent Leadership Month
- National Pet Dental Health Month
- National Senior Independence Month
- National Snack Food Month
- National Sweet Potato Month
- National Time Management Month
- National Weddings Month
- North Carolina Sweet Potato Month
- Plant the Seeds of Greatness Month
- Relationship Wellness Month
- Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month
- Spiritual Wellness Month
- Spunky Old Broads Month
- Sweet Potato Month
- Wise Health Care Consumer Month
- Worldwide Renaissance of the Heart Month
At this point what I’m really wondering is what does it take to decree a month as “National (insert whatever the hell you want here) Month”? Do you need to be some sort of nonprofit? Or do you need some kind of political backing, say like in the case of the North Carolina Sweet Potato Month, did the governor of the state declare this at some point and as a result it became the case for the entire country? In looking at some of these it seems more like all someone needs to do is declare the month to be some kind of special month and whala it suddenly becomes so . . . I’m talking to you Spunky Old Broads! (Although I must admit that one is my favorite from the list.) Because if all it takes to make a month your Nation (whatever) Month, I’m all for adding a few honorary titles to each month.
My only question now is: What National Month would you dub February?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: February, feeding birds, and spunky old broads month.
Copyright © 2012 Richard Timothy
by Richard Timothy | Jan 5, 2012 | I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
With the holiday season now over and the new year under way, today’s Smirk is about the visit my sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh and I took to visit her family. Now going to visit family over the holiday, or anytime really, can vary greatly depending on your family. Some families look at the holidays as a time to get through, like the last thirty minutes of Return of the King. Other families look at the holidays as one of the best things since peanut butter, which, unless you are allergic to peanuts, is a pretty damn delightful thing.
I have always been fortunate in that spending time with my family has always been on the peanut butter end of the peanut butter / Last thirty minutes of Return of the King appreciation scale. Angela’s family is only a short drive, about an hour and a half is all, and ending with us pulling into Grandma and Kathy’s driveway. Grandma is Angela’s grandmother on her mother’s side of the family, and the only living grandparent between the two of us . . . Kathy is her sister. I call her Grandma because, quite honestly, I have a hard time remembering her name.
This is not entirely my fault since, for the first three years Angela and I were together, no one ever referred to her by anything other than “Grandma”. Sometimes they’d include her last name, but once Angela’s father’s mother passed, there was only one Grandma left, so including her last name when talking about her seemed unnecessary. By the time I finally got around to asking Angela what her Grandma’s name was, it was already engrained in me that she was called Grandma and calling her anything other than that just sounded funny.
One of the things to know about Grandma and Kathy is that they own, make, collect, fix, and cherish dolls . . . a lot of dolls. The top floor of their home is essentially a museum of all the dolls they have collected over the years. While we were visiting the doll discussion came up, and as it turns out Grandma has started her “death book” (her words, not mine), meaning a book filled with pictures of specific items of hers in the house and who those items are supposed to go to when she passes. In short it’s her will, with photo references.
As the girls (Angela, her sister, her mother, Grandma and Kathy) were talking about which dolls went to who, and making sure they were written down in the book Grandma looked up at me with the concern of someone worried they might have left someone out said, “Well Richard hasn’t picked out any dolls yet. Do you want to go upstairs and pick out some?”
Cutest Grandma question ever!
It felt like a rite-of-passage question, but you weren’t sure if that was the case because you were never aware that this type of rite-of-passage even existed. I was honestly touched. These are some of her most prized treasures and in that small innocent question she told me, in her own little way, that I was family. And in a day filled with giving gifts, it was one of my favorite gifts this holiday season.
We all hiked up the stairs thus began the search for dolls that would someday, under exceptionally sad circumstances (her passing), make the journey from her home to ours (Angela and I). After about thirty minutes I was able to narrow my list down to three dolls, and possibly a paper castle and collection of books that were all about the castle (I borrowed the first three books to read to see if it was something I wanted). The three dolls I settled on:
- Grover of Sesame Street fame
- Buckwheat of Little Rascals fame
- Pee Wee Herman of Pee Wee Herman fame (It even has a pull string so it can talk, which, yes, is a bit creepy, but is also nostalgically amusing as well.)
She made sure she wrote down every one of them in her book.
I do hope and expect that it will be years before those dolls ever make it to my home, and once they do, of course I’ll play with them, but like so many of the items I have stored away or that are proudly displayed in my office, the true value from them is the story of how they ended up in my custody and the flood of memories attached to each item. My stuff carries the story of my life. Sometimes I’ll let things go like the reminder of the hundreds of hours I spent learning to break dance, which were held in the parachute pants I sold at a garage sale years ago. Some items still rest on my bookshelf, like the old Navy hat a friend gave me after he joined right out of high school, all those years ago. That hat holds a sea of reminders of all the adventures we had together as kids . . . even the toast I gave at his wedding.
Things might not always hold a lot of fiscal worth, but some are worth holding on to for the memories they hold for us, and these three dolls already carry with them the memories of Grandma and Kathy, which with be that much more valuable when they finally make it home.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: Merry Christmas Grandma, room full of dolls, crossing the line, and sailor hat.
© Richard Timothy 2012
by Richard Timothy | Nov 30, 2011 | Gratefully Grateful, I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction
So apparently November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short, which comes across as something that Mork of Ork would use as the punch line for one of his jokes on Mork & Mindy. The idea is that from November 1 – 30 you write like a banshee in heat and . . . okay sorry about that, bad analogy, in fact it brings up a whole slew of questions that I really don’t even want to attempt to try to answer. The goal is to write a novel during the month of November, well, 50,000 words of a story anyway, and apparently this thing has been around since 1999.
I happened to first hear about NaNoWriMo a week before November 1 of this year, and regardless of the who, what, why, when, or where, I took the plunge and devoted this month to writing a novel. I even managed to get a Smirk or two out in the process; of course it also attributed me to miss a Smirk or two in the process as well. But as of 1:15PM (with 15 minutes left in my lunch hour to spare) I hit the 50,000 word mark, thus winning the self-satisfying goal of writing a novel during the month of November . . . without actually finishing the book. On a plus note I’m right near the climax of the story, so that, and the fact that I have no outline, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.
The whole experience did get me thinking about goals though, and how simply rearranging how we choose to identify with that goal can make it attainable when you would otherwise swear it isn’t. When I first thought of writing a book in a month, I’ll admit, I thought to myself, “Yeah, I can do that.” Being that it was my first year, there was a certain amount of novice optimism on my part, which pushed me to start off like a super star, almost doubling the recommended word goal for the first day. (To hit 50,000 words I needed to write 1,667 words every day.) With that much of a lead I did something I knew I could get away with on day two, I slacked. Getting a whopping 200 words from two paragraphs written up, leaving me well behind my goal overall and for the day.
As the month progressed I discovered that there was a little something I had overlooked that might not be a willing to comply with my goal as I had planned. That something was family, friends, work, in short, life in general. Still I had my goal and I was committed to reaching it, which meant that on more than one occasion I stayed up until 5 or 6 AM on a weekend writing to catch up so that I could reach my goal.
In the end, there were a few things that I learned from the process, things that I’d like to pass one to anyone willing to read them.
- First, when you set a goal give it a deadline. If it is a bigger goal, break it up in steps that you can assign week or month long deadlines to.
- Get local support. Let those around you know about it. If you have a significant other, let them know about it from the very beginning. That way when they come into your office wanting to watch three hours’ worth of White Collar on Netflix they are much more understanding when you tell them you can’t.
- Act, it’s that simple. A goal is something you work towards, you must act otherwise your goal is nothing more than an idea.
- Don’t forget the people around you. Make time to connect with the people in your home and life. They are much more supportive if you take a break and watch one episode, or skip and entire day of writing to cook and enjoy and amazing day with your family. It also can recharge you, if you have days that nothing seems to go right.
- Remember the goal and don’t get caught up in the idea of the goal. Fortunately, the goal was to write 50,000 words, which in my case equated to 158 pages. What I realized is that the words were the goal, not the novel. While a novel may seem like a large daunting task, words are small little things that we use every day, all day long. Words are the things that make up any and every novel. Focusing on the small pieces that make up the whole is how I met my personal goal and won the NaNoWriMo challenge for 2011.
- Celebrate when you are done. When you meet your deadline and complete your goal, celebrate your accomplishment. You did what you said you were going to do and you deserve to acknowledge you achievement. Embrace that you succeeded. (Which is exactly what I’m going to be doing tonight!)
The accomplished does feel great, but the getting there was truly the best part. That is where our stories come from . . . and ultimately where, who we are today, come from. And, even though I may have failed to mention to all of you that I was going to be in the trawls of creative literary abandonment, I just wanted to say thanks for sticking around while I wrote like a banshee in heat (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Also, yes, I’ll be sure to let you all know when this new novel is finished.
Image Sources: http://www.nanowrimo.org
And Google Images, keywords: writing, and a world of thanks.
© Richard Timothy 2011
by Richard Timothy | Nov 9, 2011 | I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
Traditionally I like groups . . . most groups . . . groups that comprise of me and people I like, or groups that consist of me and people who like me. Some groups carry with it a status of greatness and awe, say like being at Woodstock. There are also groups within groups that hold even greater prestige, like remembering being at Woodstock. It can work in the opposite as well. I’m sure if you happened to let someone know you took an active part in burning down someone’s store during the ’92 LA riots, they might look at you in the exact opposite of greatness and awe. Regardless, being part of groups can carry with them good or bad things. This Smirk takes a look at some for the difficulties people experience when dealing with taking part in a group.
Now if you happen to be dealing with a new group in which you do not know many, or any, of the others in the group, there are a few ways to get around this and still fit in. First, find the “chatter box”. The chatter box is one of two people in a large group, they are either the know-it-all that is very insistent that they be the center of attention and everyone listen to them talk, or they are the impaired know-it-all, which is usually attributed to copious amounts of Scotch being ingested into their system. It is very possible that in many situations this will be the same person regardless.
All you have to do is position yourself near the group of people the chatter-box is talking at, since they rarely engage in conversation. Usually these people love to hear themselves speak, but since talking out loud to yourself is often equated to as a “crazy person” attribute, they simply talk at people in groups to avoid the fact they are just talking to themselves. They may occasionally ask someone in the group a question, but rest assured it is only rhetorical; no answer is required. For this reason alone, if you are new to a crowd, this is a great way to be in a part of something that looks like an actual social exchange where you participate by not participating. Note, there is the rare exception where a question is not rhetorical, that is why it is better to hang on the outskirts of the group as opposed to being one of the people up front.
Now let’s say you want to get engaged in an actual conversation. This is good, you can wander around eves dropping until you hear someone talking about a topic you are familiar with. However, be wary of conversing in a group more than three people. The main reason for this . . . “old topic recycling”. Here’s what I mean, have you ever been taking part of a conversation, and as you finish up and the next person is taking their turn you have a brilliant thought to add about the topic being discussed? Then, before you get another chance to speak again, the group has moved onto another topic. Now you are stuck, do you let the brilliant insight pass or do you awkwardly go back to the old topic?
In a group with more than three people, you are stuck, you have to let it pass and save it for your roommate, partner, lover, significant other, dog . . . whatever really, and tell them about it once you get home, where it will have lost all possible chances of impressing anyone. In a group of three or fewer, you can get away with bringing the old topic, just as long and you remember to segue back to the new topic.
One of the things to remember is that regardless how well-equipped you are on conversational topics, there will always be topics that you are never prepared for, usually this equates to men only, and is centered around the subject of hygiene, feminine hygiene. Usually the second a man finds himself involved in a conversation that discusses key words like “cycle”, “flow”, any type of pad without a small i in front of it, and so on, the man will attempt to become the loud speaking chatter-box of any topic, but usually sport or the weather, just long enough get out of hearing range of the female hygiene conversation taking place.
Ladies, if you ever want a man to leave you alone, or if you simply want them to leave the room, or back away from you, so you can either talk about them or the other guys and don’t want any men listening in, this is a sure fire way to do just that.
It is also important to point out that a good memory can result in extreme creepiness in these types of situations. Case in point, years ago one of my best friends and I were visiting my brother in Jackson, and ran into a girl that we had met a few times about three years earlier. As we started talking to her, going though that whole, “Where do I know you from?” opening, she points at me and says, “You’re a Capricorn.” Then she pointed to my friend tells him he’s a Leo. She had no idea what our names were, but she remembered one of our conversations from years ago when she asked what our Zodiac signs were. We smiled, told her it was nice to see her again, and slowed backed away from the nice crazy lady.
If you are one of those people that remember random things about others, do not, I repeat, NOT, bring them up in social settings. It truly will weird people out. The only time this is acceptable is if you are dating/engaged to/married to someone the person. If you remember that your significant other smelled like vanilla the first time you met, it’s sweet and romantic. If you tell a coworker that who you have never talked to outside of work, or someone that you have not seem in six months or longer, yeah, everyone’s going to think you’re creepy . . . including yourself.
So, what are some of your trouble with groups?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: groups, group leader, person with idea, la la la I can’t hear you, and raised eyebrows.
© Richard Timothy 2011
by Richard Timothy | Oct 27, 2011 | I Do Suggest, I Think There's a Point, Lightbulbs and Soapboxes, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
I hear people say all the time that lying is a bad thing. As a child I was taught that lying is wrong, not just wrong, but a sin. We even have laws that demand we not lie and if we are caught doing so we can go to jail, or get fined, or be subject to hours of community service, or all three. The thing is, when you get right down to it, there are plenty of lies that we don’t mind at all, and in some cases we enjoy them quite a lot. So for today’s Smirk, here are a few of those lies that I think we as people thoroughly enjoy.
Let’s start with the Tooth Fairy. Adults tell their kids that some mentally deranged tutu wearing waif with wings, who has an addiction to ivory in the shape of children’s teeth, breaks in to and enters their home while the family is sleeping, creeps into the child’s room and invades the kids personal space by reaching under the child’s pillow, while their sleeping head is on it!, to find a freshly removed tooth. The only thing the keeps her from being a prosecuted is the fact that, apart from being fictional, she leaves a little coin under your pillow in exchange for the tooth, instead of outright stealing it.
Still, when you hear this lie as a kid, you are elated that some fairy is going to be paying you a special visit during the night to pick up your discarded tooth and leave you some cash in its place. You know, if you stop and think about it, the Tooth Fairy is a lot like garbage man. However, in this day and age I think the PC job description would be a door-to-door ivory disposal engineer. The thing I loved about this lie was the reward I got for playing an active role in it. When I lost a tooth I always placed it under my pillow, looking forward to the monetary reward I would be getting for losing it in the first place. Although, now that I think about it, it does kind of teach kids that it’s alright to sell your body parts . . . the more I think about this lady the creepier she gets.
The cash I got from the Tooth Fairy did turn into a bit of a vicious cycle. I always used my Tooth Fairy money to buy more candy so I could lose more teeth to get more money to get more candy. The Tooth Fairy was one of my few money making venues as a kid. If I wanted candy my options for making money so I could get some was teeth (25 cents each), a lemonade stand (10 cents a glass), my weekly allowance (1 dollar), searching the couch for loose change (this varied anywhere from 1 cent to a record $1.87), and birthdays (I could always count on my grandparents giving me a 5 dollar bill each year. Due to these limited money making opportunities I once, and I’m not proud of this, took my little sister’s tooth from under her pillow while she slept and put it under my own pillow in hopes of cashing in on her lost tooth . . . it didn’t work, and I got grounded.
Next we have the over-sized, self-aware, ultra-soft, cuddly woodland creature that has a hide and seek fetish for baskets full of treats and dyed hard boiled eggs. Not to mention, thanks to Cadbury, it is believed that this bunny has the magical power to excrete chocolate eggs.
Side note: Thanks to the marketing campaign of Cadbury every Easter, I do always get a cheap laugh when I purchase my one Cadbury Creme Egg for the year and then, while eating it in front of my friends, mention once or twice, “I’ve really got to stop eating this crap.”
I loved this lie as a kid! The idea of a giant bunny sneaking into my house once a year to expel chocolate all over the place and then steal all the eggs we dyed the night before only to hide them throughout the house, was not only a vast source of youthful entertainment, but it was a wonderful exercise in imagination. It resulted in me asking questions such as, “If I was a bunny, where would I hide an Easter basket?” Plus, if you were like me and not that proficient at finding all of the stashes of chocolate droppings around the house there was always the chance of finding a lost stash of chocolate a few weeks after finishing the last bits of my Easter candy.
One lie that initially carried with it a great deal of disappointment was the lie about lying. No, not the “you should never lie” lie, but the one about the spontaneous combustion that occurs to one’s britches when a lie is told. Seriously, the first time I caught someone lying to me I was more disappointed that their pants did not burst into flames than I was about the fact that I caught them lying to me. This was a lie I did not appreciate as a kid, but as an adult who tells this lie to children, it is a true delight. The most rewarding part is watching them try to comprehend the cause and effect dynamic that they are pretty sure is flawed, but they don’t want to test it out, just in case their pants catch fire.
The list of acceptable lies goes on and on, Santa being one of the biggest, not just by body mass, but by the reaction people had on it once they found out . . . a Smirk I am saving for the holidays.
If you are still leery of this “liking lies” concept there is one lie we all love to be a part of. The “It’s not sour” lie associated for all things sour. We lie all the time about things not being sour when we know for a fact they are. The sole purpose for this is to get the person we are lying to, usually a child, to put something extremely sour in their mouth unbeknownst to them. Then we wait with high anticipation for the lie to pay off when the kid’s taste buds register they are eating something sour and their face uncontrollably distorts in to a wide array of visual hilarity. In short, we lie to people about sour food so they will eat it and make funny faces that make us laugh.
An entire room of adults will take an active role in this lie just so they can all laugh at the faces a five year old makes when they eat a lemon. If you get me anywhere near a baby and a kitchen at the same time, you can bet at some point I am going to be coaxing the little whippersnapper to sample a lemon wedge. And you know what? No one stops me. Know why? They, just like me, can’t wait to see and laugh at the infant’s reaction. The “sour lie” has been going on for generations, and I think as long as humans continue to have kids they are going to be lying to those kids about something tasting sour, all for the sake of laughing at their reaction to an unexpected flavor. It’s a lie that we all love to share.
So, what are some of your favorite happy lies?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: lying, kids pulling teeth, Cadbury Creme Egg, pants on fire, and eating sour lemon.
© Richard Timothy 2011
by Richard Timothy | Oct 19, 2011 | I Think There's a Point, Observationally Speaking
I ended up working a little late yesterday and as a result the sun had already dropped behind the mountains by the time I started my commute home. It during that magical hour where half of the people on the road are turning on their head lights and the other half are debating with themselves if it is actually dark enough to turn on their lights or should they wait a little longer. This special hour is also the time where those who drive with sunglasses struggle with the decision to remove them for the rest of the drive home.
If you are one of those who usually drive with sunglasses on, like me, you understand that the commitment to keep them on until you roll into your garage is a very powerful urge. Ok, in truth I usually just forget until something in the back of my mind reminds me that it’s getting too dark to clearly see my surroundings.
I have the same problem when I working on my computer at home. No, I don’t work on my computer while wearing sunglasses, but what I have done on at least once a week is sit in my office typing away and then suddenly realize that I am struggling to see my surroundings. This usually equated to me having a hard time seeing the keys on the keyboard. I suddenly realize that I’ve been sitting in the dark for about an hour and get up and turn on the lights.
With my sunglasses there is a hint of narcissism attached to it, because sunglasses are just cool, and for some reason I have a tendency to believe that I am always going to look cooler wearing them as opposed to not wearing them. The only exception to this rule, those big silly gag sunglasses that people occasionally put on horses. No one was ever or will ever look cool in them. Not even Mr. Ed. So when driving in the dusk in to nighttime transitional hour, I’m usually on the closer to dark end of the spectrum when I finally take them off.
It was as I was driving home, and noticing that the person behind me had made all of the same turns I had made, that I starting thinking about how that dusk to nighttime hour can change a lot more than just my motivation to turn on my lights or remove my sunglasses. It’s the magic hour that turns normal strangers in their cars to crazy psychopaths that are obviously out to get me. Here’s what I mean …
Now depending on how close you live to work and how big the city is you live in, it can be common for the same vehicle to be behind you for miles. It takes me about thirty minutes to get home from work each day, and there have been days where I’ve had the same car following me for almost twenty minutes. When these situations happen I never give them a second thought, that is, until the sun goes down that is.
There is something about driving when its dark that invokes and entirely new, albeit skewed, perspective. Let’s say I leave the grocery store at 3PM and notice a car follows me out of the parking lot and stays behind me for eight blocks before turning down a side road into some cul-de-sac two blocks before I get to my house, I wouldn’t think anything about it.
Now take the exact same situation and move it ahead a few hours so it’s now 10PM and officially dark outside. All of a sudden instead of a possible neighbor following me home, I’m clearly being stalked by a serial killer and if they are still behind me after five blocks my only option for survival is evasive maneuvers that I learned watching the Dukes of Hazzard as a kid. A sharp left, accelerate, a hard right, another hard right, and then I race to the nearest roundabout so that I can coyly do an anything but stealth O-turn to make sure no one it following me. And if someone happens to get on the roundabout while I’m on in, I’ll sometimes do an extra lap just to make sure I have escaped this new maniacal culprit. I’m just glad there are no ditches close by, because nothing says evasive maneuvers quite like jumping a ditch. I’m not saying I would, I’m just saying the temptation would be great.
So … am I the only one that goes through this? Does today’s Smirk ring true for you as well? I hope so. It’s always reassuring to know that I’m not alone. Especially when some “crazy person” if following me home from the store after the sun goes down.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: rear view mirror at night, horse wearing sunglasses, dukes of hazard jumping.
© Richard Timothy 2011
With Valentine’s Day/Single Awareness Day/Don’t Forget to be Romantic at Least Once This Year Day over and done with I thought I’d take a look at entire month of February for today’s Smirk. February is a peculiar month in that it is the only one that is constantly mispronounced, but when you actually pronounce it correctly it sounds rather funny. I am referring to the “ru”, I know when I pronounce it I say Febuary (no “r”), and if I hear someone actually pronounce the “r” when they say it, it just does not sound right. Pronunciations aside February is a very friendly month that offers quite a number of social event options.
Yep the entire month is dedicated to the remembering the contributions of African-Americans in U.S. and world history, being reminded that heart disease is the number one killer of women, but to help you deal with that the month is also dedicated to eating more chocolate, but not to worry because this month is also dedicated to all things pertaining to dental health. And to top it all off, along with buying a new toothbrush with you collection of chocolate don’t forget to purchase some bird feed, because February has also gone to the birds.
At this point what I’m really wondering is what does it take to decree a month as “National (insert whatever the hell you want here) Month”? Do you need to be some sort of nonprofit? Or do you need some kind of political backing, say like in the case of the North Carolina Sweet Potato Month, did the governor of the state declare this at some point and as a result it became the case for the entire country? In looking at some of these it seems more like all someone needs to do is declare the month to be some kind of special month and whala it suddenly becomes so . . . I’m talking to you Spunky Old Broads! (Although I must admit that one is my favorite from the list.) Because if all it takes to make a month your Nation (whatever) Month, I’m all for adding a few honorary titles to each month.
