A paen to leap day

February 29, 2008

The Washington Post has a … well, stupid article on Leap Day by Monica Hesse.

It is here, in all its quadrennial springiness, like a cartoon Slinky boinging into the wall calendar.

That metaphor’s not so much mixed as it is puréed. She goes on:

Leap Day functions for us the same way it functions for Earth, after all: as a breather, a day to catch up, a wild card in the synced order of the rest of our lives.

It’s a prolonged version of the languidness found on daylight saving days, where no one really knows what time it is and everyone uses that to their advantage …

Leap Days are like this, but longer, and grander in their utter lack of ambition. Nobody makes plans for Feb. 29, because nobody remembers when there is a Feb. 29. And so the day arrives like a snow day, an empty calendar slot with no obligations and no expectations. Just a pause.

Actually, I have scheduled work and I’m supposed to run a training session later today. Today is not a vacation day or a holiday, it is a Friday. I do not get extra time to spend with my kid, I do not get to play World of Warcraft for an extra day. I have work and meetings and probably more work and then I get to go home and have my standard, two-day, forty-eight-hour weekend before coming back into work on Monday. I don’t get so much as an extra day’s pay for it because I’m salaried.

For those of us who’s days are primarily measured in work-days and weekends this is Friday. Not a boundary between worlds or a day when the Earth pauses to listen to the sweet etherial music of the spheres. So bite me, Hesse, but do it some other day because today I am busy.

Posted in Grumbles