In Search of a Calendar

In Search of a Calendar

It's the weekend and I have as my personal goal to find a calendar to take to work in order to log some information and events.

Only, it's getting the RIGHT calendar that occupies my thoughts.

It is, after all, just paper and print with dates, days and months on pages with some artwork over the whole… or not… depending on how sterile a background you like your yearly comings-and-goings to set to.

Now, for your information, I will not be choosing any ones with themes from the “Horseland” television series or the like.

Only, usually all you ever see in the stores are these children-themed calendars. So that precludes my taking the man's way out when shopping: You know? Run into the store and snatch up what I want and run for the exit fast as possible? It would be easy to just grab it and go, but I have to think of the consequences of my actions!

A co-worker looking down at my calendar at work and seeing Mr. Button, or Calypso, Nani Cloud or Jesse Golden, with attendant unicorns, and ubiquitous stars and rainbows splattered across the masthead like official letterhead?

No, thank you.

I got enough troubles without my coworkers doubting my maturity or my sanity.

And, there is such a thing as yearly evaluations, you know?

And drug-testing.

And then it struck me.

Why are there kid's calendars in the store ANYWAY? I mean, what does a KID have to set down that is so important?

They don't have business appointments, or deadlines to pay the house note or the utility bill. The bank isn't calling them about being past due on their credit line, or checking to verify their last address.

All that comes under the heading Mom and Dad's problem.

Kids most certainly won't be putting down their next doctor or dentist's appointments. Heck, all the children I know don't care if they EVER see another doctor or dentist for the REST OF THEIR LIVES, what with attendant shots and horrid-tasting medicinal concoctions that get forced upon them.

So, I'm scouting for a grown-up calendar.

Artwork like landscapes, maybe.

Only not too frou-frou, you know?

Something with hunting guns and deer running in the background (minus the bloodtrails.) Fishing rods and shots of catfish the size of pigs being yanked out of the water (without Water Moccasins sliding on top of the lake in the background shot behind the catfish, like there always was when my dad and I used to go fishing years ago.) After all, I don't want my calendar creeping me out every time I glance at it and my survival instincts kicking in, making my stomach seize up and my teeth grit in automatic response to a deadly threat.

Ick!

And no local shots of West Memphis or Marion on my calendar.

Too many memories about SOME places.

For instance, I'm glad I never had a picture on my former calendars of the old hospital, where I had my gall bladder removed on a Saturday morning, right after I seized up on a Friday night after eating a pizza and thinking, “It's just the grease doing it to you… you're not real-ly having a heart attack!”

Or a panoramic scene of the railroad track, where I have to sit daily at a crossing, waiting for the Wabash Cannonball to creep past at five miles per hour, stop, back up and go again, using up all the daylight God had afforded me to conduct business, to be used up. And all because the incumbent local city counsels haven't figured out YET that an over-or underpass is a good thing!

No heavy metal stage pictures on my calendar. I'm not a punk.

No girly shots in my calendar. My company has a policy that covers that-as well as my wife. It's called 'zerotolerance.' No political, religious or socially-themed calendars. Because there's ALWAYS SOMEONE out there who's just begging to be personally offended.

I could get one that I really like: Like a vista of the Arkansas hill country with trees in full fall foliage in browns and yellows and reds, or a foot-stomping hoe-down shot from a Branson, Missouri show… yet then, it would make me NOT want to be at work at all, but to be out enjoying those sights.

And I don't want a calendar that makes me feel miserable.

So, I guess I could just wait for someone to give me a free calendar.

Only, by then it will be 2018.

By Robert L. Hall