In my younger years I used to theorize that my teachers made certain words hard to spell just to make life more difficult. They plotted against me. Perhaps I wasn’t far off. Maybe the spelling of “February” is just a small example of how teachers through the ages have met after school and brainstormed ways of making education a little more torturous:
“Any proposals for today?” one scowling teacher says to the others seated in a dimly lit secret room.
“I have an idea! No homework for the next day or two. We’ll give
them a false sense of security and then—WHAM!—everyone assign unreasonable
amounts of busywork on Friday.”“GENIUS!” the group of teachers collectively cries out.
“Oh! And we should all be extremely vague about what the assignments are, and when they’re due.”
“Of course.”
“Any other ideas?”
“I’m getting far too many perfect scores on my spelling tests. Let’s change some words—like put another r in the word Febuary.”
“Where would you want the extra r?”
“Who cares, as long as it doesn’t make any sense.”
“BRILLIANT!”
“Why stop at February? Grab the dictionary and point to any word you see.”
“sycology – as in, ‘I want to study sycology.’”
“Throw an h in there somewhere”
“Oh! And start it off with a p.”
“No one will ever see that one coming.”
“Give us another one.”
“buffay – as in, ‘I went to eat at the buffay.’”
“Why don’t we change the ending from ay to et?”
“But that’s insane.”
“Exactly.”
“It might just be too illogical even for us.”
“We’ll just say it’s French!”
“PERFECT!”
“Whew! I haven’t had so much fun since we made of the exceptions to the-I- before-E rule.
Anything else?”
“Yeah. I’ve being thinking. Is our calendar too logical? Just dividing the year into four seasons of 91 days each might be too predictable.”
“I know. Why don’t we divide it into 12 months?”
“Would that divide equally?”
“No. That’s exactly the point. Some months can have 30 days and others 31.”
“But have one random month with only like—Oh, I don’t know—28 days.”
“Except every fourth year give it 29!”
“BRILLIANT!!!”
The more I think about it, the more I realize February is just weird. And that brings us to today--Groundhog Day. Weird holiday. Should we really celebrate the day we turned to dumb rodents for our seasonal forecasting? It doesn’t exactly seem like a leap forward. That is unless the whole holiday is meant as a good joke on our weathermen—then its genius. And it's a fun a movie.
And then there’s Valentine’s Day. But we'll talk about that in a week and half.
Happy Groundhog Day!
Ha! Cruel, cruel teachers. So they're the reason February is so weird. Huh.
ReplyDeleteLOL! Dang them and their cruel tricks! Honestly - it's just not right!
ReplyDeleteIf nothing else it's a great excuse to eat junk food and enjoy the comedy stylings of Bill Murray :)
ReplyDeleteI think this post is brilliant! Scheming teachers ... I always thought the same thing. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd I have a little granddaughter who's having to share her birthday with that same dang rodent. The nerve!
ReplyDeleteI have to say, I come down on the side of February, at least in terms of the leap day stuff. As complicated as it is, we need to have that extra day in 97 out of every 400 years to have the calendar come out right, so that we don't end up with summer in January. And February takes the hit. It's a nerdy and wonky month, in the very best way.
ReplyDeleteGreetings, fellow Ninjas!
Ha, I can just imagine my Dad and his fellow teachers plotting to make difficult spelling test. I'm sure it's the teachers fault that 'necessary' is so hard to spell. I can't write it without spell check!
ReplyDeleteWhenever I write or type the word February, in my head I still have to sound it out 'Feb-ru-ary'. Same as 'Wed-nes-day'.
ReplyDeleteHa! Brilliant. I'm pretty sure that's EXACTLY how it went down. And while Groundhog Day is a very weird holiday, it's also one of the greatest movies of all time.
ReplyDelete