leap day

So here we all stand on this little joke island of a day, February 29th. Don't know what a "joke island" is? Well, that's understandable since it's part of the private lexicon of the Mancine family. I will explain it to you. When the kids were little they had a really cheesy video golf game. (Perhaps one of them will comment here and kindly tell us which game it was.) If one hit the ball so that it landed just barely in one of the water features, a little round tuft of grass would appear in the water for the golfer to stand on. It was a joke island, if you will.

I suppose if one really cared about "winning" the game, one would not want to deliberately hit the ball into the water feature. However, in the wacky world of video game playing at our house, a joke island was very desirable, and the kids pretty much aimed for the edge of every lake or pond they encountered. Then one of them would come running to find us, saying, "Come look at the joke island I made!" It was all very entertaining.

Anyway, here we are on Leap Day, which you probably read all about in the local newspaper this morning, as did I. So you already know that we have it every four years to keep the calendar from shifting around until we have Christmas in the hottest part of the year like those wacky Australians. I understand all that, but I do have just one question about it. Why in the world do we have to add an extra day to the crappiest month of the year? Why not add a day to the lovely month of May? Wouldn't you love to have one more perfect day of late spring instead of another day like this one? That's all I'm sayin'.