March Forth!

You realize, of course, that today’s date is actually a complete sentence? A command, to be precise.

“March Forth!”

It still amazes me that I was well out of college before I realized that this date was actually grammatically correct–the only one of the year. My sister calls it “Parade Day.” I used to call it “Sentence Day,” but people always looked at me funny, so I stopped saying that. But still, every year on this date, I smile quietly to myself (and with you), secure in the knowledge that this is, at least, something special.

You could make an argument for using “March first!” as a command, but I feel that that’s cheating. If you’re simply using the number to denote the order in which you’re directing the person to March, you can basically go the entire month: “March first, march second, third, fourth….” For today, however, “forth” works as a homonym for a word with an entirely different meaning, denoting direction, not sequence.

(And, didn’t that all sound very erudite and educated and smart and all that??)

I enjoy all these little, interesting trivia things, don’t you? Like, for example, the word “trivia”–comes from ancient Rome when, whenever three or more roads met, signposts would be put up with information as to where each one went . . . Tri-Via . . . three roads . . . little bits of information . . .