August 2, 2024, was a day to remember.
On a check that day, I wrote, in the area where you are supposed to pen the date — August 2, 2024. This was significant because it was the first time in 2024 I had actually written the correct year when prompted to write a date on a check.
Prior to that watershed moment, I had written 2023 as the current year, or sometimes even 2014, or 2004, or 2020, or once, and I wasn’t even drunk — 20niner.
My celebration of reaching this milestone so early in the year was short-lived. At church on Sunday, someone informed me (I think it was that guy behind the podium) that this was the first Sunday in August.
Then, I was stunned even more when he added, “I can’t believe we’re less than four months away from a new year.”
What? The year is almost over? I just started writing the right year on my checks! This can’t be happening! (Italics and bold means = hysterical panicking).
The problem is the year is just too short. 365 days is simply not enough time to memorize all the things you must commit to memory in a year; things like what year it is, and what numbers, combined, constitute the year, and how to spell the year, and your cell phone number.
How are we supposed to cram all that into our head in a mere 12month period? And, also remember what month it is? And, that there are 10 of them?
Now, this isn’t as vexing a problem in some years. This year — 2024 — seems to have flown by. It seems like it’s only been 2024 for about two months.
As stated, I just started recognizing it as a new year. This year’s predecessor, 2023, seemed like it lasted 34 years. It took forever to end. The year before, 2022, also seemed to take forever, but not as bad, like 19 years. The year before that, 2021, just seemed like a regular year.
So, the last four years have, cumulatively, seemed like 54 years and two months.
If I have a point, and I don’t, it’s this. If it takes a regular person (me — I realize that’s a stretch) between 200 and 300 days to learn a new year number, maybe we need to change something to make it easier for regular people. Or, change the definition of “regular.”
What I propose is this. We make the year longer. Who came up with this 365-days-in-a-year business anyway? Probably the same sadistic jerk who came up with the 40hour work week.
It’s just not reasonable to expect Americans to work 40 hours a week, or be able to fit 365 days in a year, or to sleep just 10 hours a day, or to understand the difference with poll and pole.
There’s too much to do and learn, too many Facebook reels of Norm Macdonald, too many videos of guys wrecking golf carts, and Christmas is just too darn close to the next Christmas. It’s getting rather expensive to have to buy presents for everyone every 365 days.
I really don’t know who to contact about requesting the year be extended. Perhaps the president. If we stretched out a year for, say, four years, he’d be a lot younger. He’d probably be all for it.
And I’d be 13. As long as I didn’t have to go back to middle school, I’d be all for that too.
• Len Robbins is the editor of The Clinch County News. He can be reached at lrobbins@clinchcounty news
