Marching through a no-good month

March, we’ve got to quit meeting like this. You’re a bad month and you know it. I want out of this relationship.

You exist merely to taunt me, and I’ve had it with your schizophrenic tendencies. One minute you’re all sunshine and a promise of spring. The next you’re a graupel blizzard with gale-force winds.

Yeah, yeah, we know the mantra: “March comes in like a lion and leaves like a lamb.” We’re supposed to expect anything and everything weather-wise this month. But March, I’m so over you. The roads are dusty, the snow is crunchy, the grass is brown, the trees still bare.

We survived the post-holiday slump of January and the long, gray days of February just to get to you, March, but you’re not much to look at. Sure, you give us the first day of spring and St. Patrick’s Day, but otherwise, what good are you?

Because I couldn’t think of any redeeming qualities about you, I googled “What’s special about March?” And guess who responded first — Reader’s Digest. That long-running magazine has an article online titled “16 surprising facts about the month of March.”

Topping the list: March was the first month of the year, according to the oldest Roman calendars. Prior to 150 B.C. the Roman calendar was 10 months long and ran from March to December. Wow, there’s a fun fact that does nothing to redeem you, March.

March is also the best month for basketball (March Madness) but the worst for productivity, according to the Reader’s Digest compilation. It’s predicted “American companies will lose $1.9 billion in wages paid to unproductive workers spending company time on betting pool priorities,” the article noted.

March is also the best month for vasectomies, the list continues. Oh, there’s a claim to fame! The article noted that according to doctors at the Cleveland Clinic, the number of vasectomies surges by 50 percent during the first week of March Madness.

“Why?” the article wonders, and then answers this puzzling phenomenon. “Patients typically need ‘at least a day with ice’ to keep swelling down, says urologist Stephen Jones, MD. So if they’re going to spend a whole day doing nothing, it’s not hard to figure out that they’d want to do it on a day they’d like to be sitting in front of the television,” the Reader’s Digest points out.

The article notes some allegedly impressive March dates: March 14 is Pi Day, an annual celebration of the mathematical constant pi, observed on March 14 because 3, 1, and 4 are the first three significant digits of pi.

March 21, 2006, is the day Twitter launched as a social media site. Again, not impressed.

I know there’s more than three weeks left of you, March, and I suppose I’ll have to put up with your shenanigans. Evil temptress that you are, you’ll do your best to lure me into your embrace. There will be the warmth of sunshine on my shoulders some days that will suck me back into your vortex. I’ve seen the daffodils I planted on the south side of the house beginning to poke up through the dirt. I’ll give you credit for that, but hear this, March — I’ll always love April more.

News Editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.