Six More Weeks Of Winter

Well, for those of us in the North America, what seems to be both the most eagerly awaited and the most dreaded day on the calendar has come and gone. I speak of course of Ground Hog Day. Yes, it is true. We base our hopes for an early spring on a rodent that is yanked from its burrow by some guy in a top hat and whether or not we think it sees its shadow. What a fool proof system. Thank goodness we haven't spent loads of money in setting up weather monitoring stations and developing computer programs for modelling weather systems. Oh, wait… D'oh!

Anyway, I digress. Back to the most eagerly awaited part. My youngest child, who is 6 years old, was incredibly excited about Ground Hog Day this year. All we heard from her for days was "It's almost Ground Hog Day," and many variations of this, several times a day and sometimes a couple of times an hour. Ground Hog Day hysteria was sweeping the house. My bride and I could not understand this whole interest in what is essentially a made up 'holiday', which if you care to look at your calendar, has no impact on the length of the winter. Any more excitement over this and we thought we might have to invest in a scale replica of a ground hog to set up in our living room.

So, anyway, the big day comes and my daughter gets home from school and wants to know "Did the ground hog see it's shadow?" To which I said, "Which one?", because there are about 10 or so different rodents who 'predict' the coming of spring. My humour was of course lost on her, so I broke the news that, yes, it saw it's shadow and that there would be six more weeks of winter. Her face crumpled in disappointment and I stood dumbfounded at her reaction this piece of ridiculous news.

After she got over her initial disappointment and some questioning on my part, I came to find out that it was not whether or not spring was going to come early that was her concern. In her mind she figured that if spring came early then so would her birthday! I don't know if she thought that the 6 weeks that lie between Ground Hog Day and the first day of Spring would just disappear or what, but… Needless to say that after the kids had hit the hay for the night my bride and I had a good laugh at the logic behind the desire for an early birthday.