Friday on the radio I heard Slate’s Assessment: Let’s Get Rid of August
David Plotz of Slate offers a cheeky commentary on why the month of August should be eliminated, or at least shortened.
Plotz’s plans for August lack one key feature: familiarity with the month. He quips that most people don’t know whether it has 30 or 31 days without reciting the poem. Why not hack off the last ten days? he says.
But his proposals lack one key piece of practical experience. I propose that there is nothing like being nine months pregnant in August to provide familiarity with the month. Better yet is to have a “due date” in the middle but a delivery ending up close to the end. I bet that families who have had children in August know exactly how many days are in the month: watching the days pass on the calendar can be an indelible impression in the mind, a form of water torture, day by day like drop by drop. Following Plotz’s suggestions for truncating August would have had me giving birth near Labor Day; perhaps an appropriate amendment…
