One Hundred-Five

December 17th, 2003.

A day I often describe as the worst day of my life. It’s odd, considering I’m in the middle of NYC and I’m a part of the 9/11 generation and all, but that’s the day I remember as a Wednesday. That’s the day I remember as 100 years after the first powered flight by the Wright Brothers. That’s the day I remember I ate meat from a foam carton, went to a familiar place, and tested “derogatory.”

Needless to say, I wouldn’t talk about it without some kind of veil, and as such, my description above is meaningless to all but me, and indecipherable, even grammatically.

Every year since that day, December 17th has been rather inauspicious for me. I try to cheer up by remembering that it’s the day of the Wright Brothers’ triumph, but it only reminds me of my 2003 experience. After all, the Wright Brothers, for an airplane nut like me, were part the reason I remembered it so well.

It’s been five years, now, but it is unexpectedly a Wednesday again. The day of week increments a day for a given date in a year from the previous year, unless it is a leap year, in which case the day of week is incremented twice if the day occurs in a month after the end of February. Few people, including me, think about leap years, so of course it caught me by surprise that this December 17th was once again on a Wednesday, though it had been only five, not seven years since.

I think often about time and date, both because it is a passion of mine, and because it’s a quirk for me to calculate the day of week of a date when a interesting specimen of a date is mentioned. I am ashamed of it. I once missed a very important deadline by about seven months. I was called to an office to be reprimanded, but when I was reminded of the deadline, the first thing I blurted out was its day of week.

I propose a toast… to the one hundred-fifth anniversary of flight.