Squeezing It In

 Every four years we are gifted with this additional day. The one that provides endless amusement for grade schoolers and dads who enjoy being obtuse about the date and time. Things that really should be absolutes, but science has insisted that every four years we square our accounts by scooping up the fractions of a day and bundle them all together into February 29. All that acclaim we toss in the direction of Nicolaus Copernicus, but it was Julius Caesar who suggested that we needed to squeeze a few extra minutes into the calendar to align us with the stars. 

Otherwise Astrology wouldn't work. And you wouldn't know which day to get out of bed and ask for a raise based on some quacky bit of animal and fish lore dreamed up by a bunch of drunken Greeks. 

So now, in these more enlightened times, we hold on to that quarter day for four years and then stitch the bits together to make the day with which you are currently gifted. 

My wife has suggested that we use this extra time to do our civic duty: voting. Make it a national holiday and remove the excuses that preclude so many of us from doing our democratic duty. 

Yes. I said "duty."

Of course this works for our rather quaint insistence that we vote for presidents every four years. But it doesn't account for those stray special elections for vacated seats and state propositions and local concerns. It also fails to recognize the willy-nilly lack of election cycles in places like Canada and Great Britain where elections seem to happen on a whim. 

So, in an effort to maintain some of that air of responsibility but recognizing the rest of the planet does not have our same boring cycle for picking its leaders, I would like to make the following: Leak Year. Every four years on February 29, you should go around your house and fix leaky faucets. Or squeaky hinges. Or any other deferred maintenance you have set aside for "when you have the time." Here it is. Got a toilet that runs a little too long? Not after today. How about your kid's bike that just needs a little air in the tires? Done. Or maybe you could just use the day to sit down and make a list of all the things that you would like to fix. 

Four years from now. 

Thank you for your time.