To See or Not to See that is the Question!

Here it is the best day of the year! Well that is if you ask those that hate winter anyway… oh and only if the sighting goes in their favor. I guess I still have to ask is this really a holiday? Have any of you gotten holiday pay for Groundhog Day? I wonder maybe my old math teacher got holiday pay for it and that’s why he liked it so much? Hmmm, oh great yet another question that I have to mull over year after year, I swear when does it end? What’s that? Yeah I suppose you have a point there, if I stopped writing about this stuff I probably wouldn’t be haunted by these questions, I never thought of it like that, man you guys are the best. Well thanks see ya all later! Okay, so I can’t give up that easy… besides if I’m haunted by this stuff I might just as well bug all of you while I’m at it. The new question after that is how do you like me now? The same I hope… all right I’ll get on with it… you don’t have to get out the whip honest… see I’m getting on with it.
It’s not every day that we depend on an animal to tell us what the weather will be for the next six weeks or so except of course Groundhog Day. Who knew that one animal would gain so much respect in the world that even the best meteorologists would look to for a prediction on the weather, certainly not me and it’s probably safe to say that those that began the tradition had no idea just how big it would become either.
It all comes down to a shadow or no shadow. What if he comes out and sees his shadow and then it disappears? I mean on the second day of February in the morning just like clockwork there comes this ground hog sticks his head up out of its hole and begins to look around. Just as the sun is coming up he turns his head to the left and sees his shadow, looks back in its hole and to let its family know that it’s safe to come up, turns back and poof no more shadow. What do you suppose happens then? You know what I mean? Maybe Junior could help us out with this one…. Nah I think that it really doesn’t matter one way or the other and it only matters to the ground hog. I mean how many times have the “meteorologists” gotten it wrong? I rest my case.
I have an idea or an experiment if you will, why not take all of the so called meteorologist’s predictions over the last few weeks of winter and compare them to the groundhogs’ one day prediction and see which one gets it right, short winter or long winter. Maybe we could use other animals to predict our weather with more accuracy that is if the groundhog gets it right more often. See a herd of cows in the field lying down get ready for rain, standing up sunshine, standing under a tree hot weather, lying down under a tree, thunder storm. Well it worked for our ancestors why shouldn’t it work for us now. Then meteorologists could focus on something better or more important weather stuff like making smiley faces for their maps. Hey don’t write me I know you guys spend lots of money on your education and maybe some of you are better at your jobs than others, but I don’t think any of you have ever worked on the TV stations I have ever watched. How did that bit go on Home Improvement; ‘That’s Tim Taylor in care of…’ only I guess in my case that would be ‘That’s W. M. Stahl in care of…’. Yeah don’t write me I won’t answer angry weatherman or weather person’s letters, just not going to happen.
That’s the thing about predicting something you already know you are not always going to be right. Just how many jobs are there that have built-in fail-safes like that, I know, only one kind right. Predictors have got to have the best kind of job security, after all like I said it’s built in. In most instances they have a fifty-fifty chance of being right the weather will either be sunny or it won’t it will either rain or it won’t, it will be windy, well you get the idea. Sure there are other places where you get a thirty-three percent accuracy curve for that you have the stock market predictors up down or no change it’s not like you have to be right all the time; just most of the time. Didn’t someone once say that the more you predict the more times you will be right but the percentages never change or something to that effect. You know that has to be right and you don’t even have to know anything about predictions although it would help if you did, then again maybe you don’t. Who’s to say for sure what you need to know about predicting look at me what I know very little about predicting but I can already predict you are beginning to wonder just what I’m thinking about. Have I driven you to the brink of sanity yet? Welcome to my world.
If we get back to this thing called Groundhog Day you might see where it all went off the track or not; again it’s a fifty-fifty shot. Just thinking about what made those crafty Germans look to an animal to see if there would be more winter or not is mind boggling. You don’t suppose it was some family members’ job to keep track of those predictions to see if it was worth keeping track of the predictions. Hmm, sounds a little like something with a bad temper that goes round and round.
In the end whether the little rodent sees their shadow or not we still have to put up with all the in-between times. Freezing rain, snow, late blizzards and whatever else winter wants to throw at us before it’s ready to go away until the next coming winter. Then again when you see it snow just three weeks before it’s officially Summer or in July itself you realize the weather will do just whatever the hell it wants to do no matter what you predict.
So to you my friends and family and family of friends, I give you Groundhog Day in all its frustrating best; will there be or won’t there be. I know I always vote ‘won’t there be’. Celebrate the day if you must and I say you must or at the very least you should. I know I will be that is if it all goes my way, no snowmobilers allowed, just kidding. Take a minute today and grab your beverage of choice and offer up a toast to that prestidigitator of all prestidigitators the groundhog. Embrace the day regardless of the weather and whether or not there will six more weeks of winter or just one day. Yes, as always I am pulling for the one day winter feature, but then again I am used to being disappointed.