Stories From the Calendar

by Nina Young

 January

It's hard being the oldest.  Every year, I have to wake up my siblings from their winter sleep.  Tell them to start preparing.  After all, I'm only in charge for one month, then it's off to February, March, April, and before you know it it's May 1st and there's still snow everywhere. 

July is always the worst about it.  All she ever wants to do is chill on the beach in some tropical part of the world.  Meanwhile, the spring months are scurrying to get the snow melted and the flowers blooming so these lazy summers can just bump up the temperature and chill until their month is up.  And don’t even get me started on December.  He’s the youngest, but everyone says he should be in charge.  Just because he gets all the cool holidays, snow days, the second-longest break, and New Year’s Eve, doesn’t mean he’s even remotely qualified to lead.  He’s inexperienced, lazy, cold, and he never gets ANYthing done.  If I’m like, “Ok, December, November is brewing up a bunch of rainstorms for the end of her month.  I want a cold snap and icicles on the roves for your grand opening.”, then on the 1st it’ll be 60 degrees and sunny.

Seriously, I think he’d be better as summer.  Most days he doesn’t even snow.

August

All right all right all RIGHT! Enough! Who said January could go first?  I’ll bet it was September.  He’s the worst.  All obsessed with order and stuff. Well, Sept, I’ve got a word for you.  Just cuz Jan is the first and the oldest, doesn’t mean he has to be first at EVERYTHING.  In fact, I think he gives a rotten first impression of us months.  Like, July isn’t lazy.  She just doesn’t have a huge need for structured days.  And December? He may not always adhere to January’s strict rules, but he makes a mean cup of hot cocoa.

Having ranted already, I can now proceed to tell you about myself (like you’ve probably guessed, I am WAY unorganized).  I’m August.  The coolest month.  Except September always cuts into my time slot.  He has this thing he calls school, which basically means that no matter how much we snow, rain, or crank up the heat, no one’s gonna care cause they’re locked in a building learning about, I dunno, the 57th president of Lithuania, or whatever.

That probably makes me sound like I don’t care about anything, which is NOT true.  I care about lots of stuff.  Such as swimming and not caring about things.  Well that’s all for now.  Since September is the month right after me, he’ll probably insist on going next.  Brace yourselves.  There will be pop quizzes.

September

POP QUIZ!  What is the capital of Scandinavia?

WRONG!  Scandinavia is not a country.  You obviously didn’t study.

I am September. S-E-P-T-E-M-B-E-R.  And you’d better remember that, because it will be on next week’s test.  While I’m here, I thought I would give you a little background knowledge on where we months originated.  Open your history books, everyone, we’re going to page 79.

So Humans came up with the months and their names, right?  WRONG!  You puny little shrimps just happened to come up with the same names and lengths for the months as our parents did.  In truth, it started long before you disgusting land snails ever crawled our beautiful earth.  It started with the embodiment of winter.  Her name was Winter, because back then everyone was a lot less creative with names.

Well, on the first day of the first year EVER, Winter had a child, somehow all by herself.  If you are confused at this point, feel free to reference your Anatomy of the Months and Seasons textbook.

Anyways, Winter named her son January and immediately proclaimed him the King of all Months.  He would rule not only the calendar, but a roughly thirty day period, stretching from his birthday, until the expected due date of her next sons, whom she would name February.

You can see where this is going.  When each month was born, they were given a short time to rule over lasting from their birthday until when the next month was born.  But Winter was not the only season to create the months.

March was the daughter of Winter and Spring.  June was the daughter of Spring and Summer.  September(a.k.a. me) was the son of Summer and fall, and little December was born to Fall and Winter.
For whatever reason, the months with two parents are now the minority.

Well that will about wrap it up.  For homework I expect you to answer questions 4-18 on the creation of the months.

Now get to your next class!

Nina Young, 14 is an aspiring young author from Florence, Massachusetts.  She enjoys the abstract expressions of her deepest darkest thoughts and secrets that is her writing.  She also loves sloths and cheesecake, although it rarely shows up in her writing.