A lot of people have a problem with February. That’s why magazines and the internet are filled with articles devoted to “Beating the February Blahs” and “10 Ways to Fight that February Funk”. Or, my personal favorite, “It’s a Short Month — Sleep it Off!”.
As a person who bottoms out in February, I get it. In January I’m fine, still basking in the afterglow of that goodwill-toward-men song I sing all through December. And during every other month that isn’t February I am as disgustingly cheerful as Holly Golightly, scattering joy and positivity like rainbow sprinkles.
But that all ends as fast as you can say “Rabbit Rabbit” at 12:01AM on February 1. That’s when the funk hits the fan, and I roll out of the wrong side of the bed every stinkin’ morning, ready to jump ugly with whoever looks at me, talks to me, or gets too close to my back bumper.
“… late afternoon in early February, was there a moment of the year better suited for despair?” Alice McDermott, author
I used to think that my February angst was the result of months wrapped in scratchy fisherman’s knit turtlenecks while slogging through gray slush and sniffing back a perpetually runny nose.
I grew up in Northern Ohio and every place I’ve ever lived, including the last 40 years on Shelter Island, has featured long, cold winters, so you’d think that eventually I’d adapt, but that didn’t happen and every year, winter felt meaner, grayer, especially the February part.
So I ran away from it and for the past decade have spent the harshest months down south, where it’s all sunscreen, palm trees and pina coladas.
It doesn’t matter. By the time Puxatawney Phil makes his prediction I am stuck in a big old bucket of PMS muck. (PMS, in this particular situation, means Pre-March Syndrome. Yes, it too is a thing. Look it up. You’ll see my picture.)
“February is a suitable month for dying…”Anna Quindlen, journalist
I’ve never done in February, what I didn’t come to regret in March and for some reason, February is the month I decide that something has to change.
We need new furniture, I might say, or I hate this carpeting. I have always hated this carpeting. Or look at this beautiful wallpaper with life-size cartoon drawings of dancing French poodles that’s perfect for our downstairs bathroom.
(In my defense, let me add here that not only did I buy that wallpaper under the influence of February, I also had the flu. It was February that made me buy dancing poodle wallpaper. It was the flu that made me plaster it on the ceiling, too.)
If you ask around, I bet you’ll find that the collective list of February’s regrettable mistakes is at least 28 or 29 pages long. My, my. What a coincidence.
“Act in haste, repent at leisure.”David Foster Wallace, essayist
I find that in February, I don’t talk all that much. Mostly I ask questions that tend to stop a conversation rather than encourage one. Questions such as: Is that supposed to be funny? Or, Exactly what did you mean by that? And, Yes, it’s chicken. Do you have a problem with chicken?
During the rest of the year I have a long fuse but in February it’s so short sometimes this little Jekyll and Hyde character flaw startles even me. My family still remembers the cold, bleak, afternoon I came in the house and saw backpacks and snowy shoes on the floor and a couple of dishes left on the table and went bonkers.
I walked over to the silverware drawer, pulled it out and turned it upside down, spreading cutlery across the kitchen floor. I even kicked it around to make sure it slid to every corner.
Boy, didn’t that get everyone’s attention! Those backpacks and snowy shoes and dishes disappeared in a hurry. Of course, it did take me three hours to locate and then wash all the silverware.
Later we all laughed about what had happened. By later, I mean in March.
At the risk of sounding paranoid, even the February stars are lined up against me. A typical February horoscope read: Try to control your anger. Stop making poor choices. Try to be kinder.
Kinder? Me? That really ticked me off! But then it’s February, everything ticks me off.
“February is the reason we don’t have a gun in the house.” Joanne Sherman, whiner
Gettin’ Down with February
This post is the latest installment of Joanne Sherman’s Off the Column column, with new work appearing every other Tuesday. Follow this link to find past columns.
A former Associate Editor of the Shelter Island Reporter, Joanne has won multiple awards for her humor columns in both the Suffolk Times and the Reporter. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Southern Living, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle and other publications. She wrote a column, “Can We Talk”, in Toastmaster, a magazine for Toastmasters International, and was an award-winning humorist/commentator for WPBX radio in Southampton. She and her husband, Hoot Sherman, live on Shelter Island.
