Gored by the Papal Bull

I couldn’t just relax and shut up, could I?

                         by Robert LaFrance

            As you can see by looking at the date on this newspaper, we have a February 29^th this year. I’m all excited.

            What to do today on this extra day? Should I clean out the shed, which is getting pretty depleted as to stovewood, or should I wash the car, go for a great walk, or look up the meaning of ‘spiessbürger’? Or, better still, should I relax and read a book? Or perhaps just relax? In bed? After all, this is an extra day.

            But no, I couldn’t just relax, shut up and enjoy that fact that I get an extra twenty-four hours this year. No, not me. Something in the back of my mind reminded me that the addition of that day every four years – during ‘leap’ year, because we leap for joy – isn’t quite as simple as it sounds. I jogged (in my Gremlin) over to visit the old Perfessor, a retired gentleman whose Physics classes at UNB were always a joy I am sure. I know they were in 1967 when I studied drinking at that university. Professor (as he was then) Gendron used to do things like parachute from hot-air balloons to demonstrate buoyancy.

            He was home when I knocked on the door of his cabin in Lower Kintore. Since it was already 10:00 am, he was sipping on some lemonade. Although he offered me some I refused, but then when he repeated the offer, I felt obliged, out of politeness, to accept a jar of the amber liquid.

            He cleared his throat and began the lecture. “You see, my boy, up until 1582 everybody, meaning the Catholic Church, used what they called the Julian calendar, but it had a few problems. It accumulated an error of three days about every four hundred years…”

            “Whew,” I said, accepting a second lemonade. “That sounds serious!”

            Ignoring my scrawny attempt at sarcasm, he went on. “So Pope Gregory XIII, the top gun of the day, signed a ‘papal bull’ – and no remarks from you – that decreed we would forevermore use what we’re using today – the Gregorian Calendar. Quite a coincidence, its being named Gregorian and the pope being named Gregory, what?”

            The Perfessor went on to explain that the new calendar – and didn’t THAT cause some problems around the world – reformed not only the calendar but also the lunar cycle. I never knew the pope had that much power. “One thing they did was schedule leap years so that instead of one every four years, there would be 97 every 400 years to keep things in kilter, as they say. The years 1896 and 1904 were leap years, but the year 1900 was not. Isn’t that interesting? Bob? Wake up!”

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            Now that I have dealt with this calendar stuff that I am sure absorbs many of your waking hours as it does mine, we move on to some current observations, questions and answers about everyday life in the great Province of New Brunswick:

-        Tired of high gas prices, I bought a siphon hose. My friend Flug was appalled as you can imagine. Honesty has been a watchword of his since 1998, or perhaps early 1999. He looked at me in that way that used to scare his dog, but for me he just looked like a retired Parliament Hill barber. “It’s okay, Flug,” I said. I’m not planning to go around siphoning gasoline; I plan to now take up serious drinking to forget those high prices, and the funnel is going to be a great help.” I lied of course.

-        Did you ever wonder how radio and television talk show and other hosts always look/sound so cheerful?  These people aren’t real, are they? But of course I know they are, because I met quite a few during my years working as ‘a stringer’ for a couple of radio stations (CJCJ in Woodstock and CBC in Fredericton). I could never be one of those people. If I came into the studio in the morning with a grudge against the world, that world would soon hear about it. Come to think of it, perhaps that’s why those radio stations and I parted company.

-        I’m still trying to get over the embarrassment I suffered at a Christmas concert I attended and at which I attempted to sing several seasonal songs. Someone asked me what the title of one song meant and I said clearly, so that about a dozen people heard me: “It refers to the unleavened bread they used to make in Biblical times in the Middle East. When they finally got some stuff so their bread would raise it sure made life easier.” There were a few titters, and even some scornful laughter. Someone – and I won’t mention who she was because it’s still too embarrassing – said: “Bob, it’s not ‘Star of the Yeast’…it’s ‘Star of the East’.”

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