Cliché watch
One of the great under-reported benefits of not living in the U.S. is that each November you don’t have to listen to hundreds of people using the phrase “turkey day.” You don’t hear a lot of “Xmas” either. This out-of-season thought occurred to me this morning when the skeletal weatherbetty on CNN International® informed us that although it is 16 below zero celcius in Moscow today, “Spring has indeed sprung in other parts of Europe.”
I take in this news with joy. The joy is bolstered by the fact that for once the weather forecast, or at least presentcast, is accurate. The last few days here have been sunny and mild bordering on the hot. It feels like it means it, too. Pushing Adam around in his voziček on Sunday I was actively hot but still dressed for the frigid weather we’d gotten used to. I kept stripping off middle layers till I was just in T-shirt and shell. I had to keep the jacket on because it was loaded down with electronics and I was listening to the Discman® in the pocket. By the time I got home the Gore-Tex® smelled like Goat-Tex®.
So spring is welcome. But do we have to do this “spring has sprung” thing? Is it necessary at all, one, and does it stay funny or jaunty or companionable or whatever it is that its proponents think it is, year after year? I suppose that the first person to have realized that spring is both the name of a season AND a verb must have thought the pun was HIGH-larious, but can’t we shelve this one? “Spring forward, fall back” has its usefulness as a mnemonic for the horologically impaired, but when I hear “spring has sprung” I think of sofa cushions that skewer your ass.
The mitigating factor is that so far I have been completely spared hearing anyone say either “March madness” in any context or “spring into savings,” but I am sure it is only a matter of time.
UPDATE: Less than 12 hours after writing that last sentence I opened my inbox to find that the Washington Post® had spammed me overnight with a topic line reading “MARCH MADNESS.” Caps theirs. Damn it.
