The Saddest Time of Year

I began paying attention to calendars back in grade school, so as I am entering middle-age now, I've been at it for more years than I'd care to contemplate. I've got a calendar in front of me on my desk at work that has been in my possession since fourth grade in 1969. It consists of two wooden blocks with all the necessary digits to make any date from 01 to 31 and a series of plastic strips beneath the blocks with the names of the months.

When I was a schoolboy, the switch from August to September was always with a lump in my throat, as that signalled the end of summer vacation and the impending start of the school year (back then when the earth was still cooling, school never started before Labor Day). What I noticed over a period of many years is that that sense of going from the "good months" to the "bad months" was triggered in Pavlovian form by the length of the name of the months beginning with "September". The fact that the month's nine letters filled the entire plastic strip where "August" left plenty of room on either side was itself an emotional trigger.

A bit of analysis demonstrated that there is a good reason (or at least "reason") for this association of emotional state with the length of the months' names--at least there is for a school-fearing and warm-weather-loving midwestern boy such as I was. There are exactly six months with seven or more letters in their names, and they are all contiguous on the calendar: September through February. Conversely, there are exactly six months with less than seven letters in their names, and they are all contiguous: March through August. The long-named months represent a period where the weather and the school year are getting worse, whereas the short-named months represent the opposite--a period in which hope is returning, weather is improving, and school gives way to a summer which at least seems as if it will never end.

It's been many years since I've been on a school calendar, and these days, stifling hot summer days are almost as bad as frigid winter. But the youthful association still remains. As I get set to flip the plastic strip on the calendar from the months with less-than-seven letters in their names to the months with seven-or-more letters, I can't help but feel that the saddest time of year is beginning once more.