Everyone has their favorite time of year. For a lot of people – maybe even most people – it is the holidays.

Not this kid.

If I could go to sleep Oct. 30, wake up for the bowl games on New Year’s Day and sleep again until Feb. 15 (waking up for the Super Bowl, of course), I would be a happy camper. Well maybe not happy, but happier.

I just despise the incessant barrage of being forced to feel obligated. And every year, it gets worse and worse.

For others, it is spring time. There is a sense of renewal about spring. Blooming flowers, longer days, the crack of the bat.

Not this kid.

All spring means to me are allergies and hay fever, losing an hour’s sleep with ridiculous Daylight Saving Time and more sporting events to cover than there are hours in a day or days in a week.

Since I was a little kid September has always been my month and through the years evolutions have kept it that way.

I can remember my father getting ready for hunting season and being so happy to do so. I longed for the day when I would finally get to go with him. Finally on the third Saturday in September around the age of 10 I got to go.

Eventually hunting became my own thing and it was a way to be close to my dad after he was gone. Then it became a ritual for my mom and I to go to Reno when I got back out of the woods. But she is gone now too.

And I do not know if I will ever see my hunting grounds again. The last time I fired a gun my shoulder hurt for more than 18 months, so I am pretty sure my hunting days are over. But I enjoy going there with my son, but silly squabbles have made me personna non grata in the woods I traveled with my father.

Also as a young tike September came to mean the beginning of football season. My father loved the 49ers and cheered for them win or lose, so to see his joy when Dwight Clark made “The Catch” was awesome. And then to have the Niners win the Super Bowl in 1982 was off the charts.

I eventually became enamored with the game of football, starting to play in fifth grade, through high school and into the service before a severe shoulder injury – the one that has crept up repeatedly over the years and now precludes me from firing a rifle – ended my college career three days into practice. I coached and now cover the sport for local papers.

All that begins in September. But the most significant September for me was in 1982 – when my son was born. My parents were out of town and hurried home and to see the look of pride on their faces walking up the hallway at the hospital was something to behold and something I will never forget.

To me, life is a book. We write a page a day. Some pages we want to go back and read over and over again, and others we want to shred. Regardless, those pages are there forever.

There are a lot of people who wish the pages of this September would just go away. I cannot imagine the horror an helplessness that is felt by the ever-increasing number of fire victims in this state. And the worse is yet to come. After the fires will come the floods and mudslides – some are even happening now.  And let us not forget those halfway around the world fleeing for their lives.

Fire, floods, tyranny – there are some that would say this is Biblical. I am not one to speak for the Almighty, and if there is a God I will have a lot to answer for. But on the grand scale of things, there is not much worse than those who use the word of God to further their own agendas.

And this month, another one of those zealots raised their ugly heads. I will not give her the publicity she has been relishing in by stating her name, but the maybe county clerk in Kentucky who refused to marry same-sex couples needs to read the Good Book: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Granted, that quote had to do with taxes, but the meaning is the same. She is free to go hand-in-hand with Mike Huckaby and any other politician trolling for support and worship as she sees fit. But she took an oath to do her job and if her religion precludes her from doing so, then she needs to resign.

Not standing by her oaths is nothing new to her. She has been married four times, and if even a portion of the Internet writings about her are correct, hopefully Judgment Day will be graded on a curve because she definitely lowers the bar.      

Yes, this September will be one a lot of people will not want to revisit. But time will march on and October will be here soon with its changing colors and then maybe the rains of November will begin to wash away some of the pain this month has brought to so many people.

I hope so.

 

Comments can be addressed to dcampbell@mantecabulletin.com