"Calendar Guy"

By Jerry Zezima

Inspired by pop legend Neil Sedaka, who is most famous for his 1960 hit song “Calendar Girl,” I love, I love, I love to be a calendar guy, each and every day of the year. And since it’s 2024 already, this can mean only one thing for a geezer like me: Times flies when you’re incoherent.

That is why, as I leap into this leap year, which gives me an extra day to do nothing, I am grateful for a calendar featuring my five grandchildren.

In fact, I have two calendars.

One hangs on the refrigerator door, so when I stumble downstairs in the morning to make coffee, I can see the kiddies’ smiling faces, smile back at them and — not always the case for guys my age — know what day it is.

The other calendar, which is smaller but no less delightful, is on the desk in my office. It also features great photos of my grandchildren. This inspires me when I sit down in front of the computer with my coffee and, as I rack what little is left of my brain for a column idea, write about my grandchildren.

The calendar tradition was started a few years ago by my younger daughter, the mother of my oldest two granddaughters, ages 10 and 7. She makes the calendars using photos of her kids and her sister’s children — a boy, 6, and his twin siblings, a girl and a boy, 4.

Each month has a theme. The highlights are holidays and birthdays, including that of the children’s grandfather, who is a bigger kid than all of them.

Unfortunately, the calendar took a hiatus last year. But it’s back — twofold — this time around. And it’s better than any other calendar I have ever had or could ever be part of myself.

Until now, the best desk calendar I ever got was from 2022. It was called “Pun Intended” and featured a pun a day for an entire year.

Jan. 11 (my birthday): “A boiled egg for breakfast is hard to beat!”

April 28: “Seven days without a pun makes one weak.”

Dec. 23: “Santa’s helpers are subordinate Clauses.”

As a groan man, I am hanging on to this calendar, which has me in a days.

The replacements for last year’s nonexistent grandchildren calendars featured nature scenes: flowers, trees and snowy landscapes, not things that could kill you, like lions and tigers and bears, oh, my!

We’ve also had calendars with cute little puppies and kittens, because my wife is on ASPCA mailing list, but none featuring young, nice-looking human beings, which is why I don’t have my own calendar.

Still, if the Chippendales can be on a calendar, and hunky firefighters can get their own calendar, why not a calendar geared to geezers?

Last year, after seeing Martha Stewart on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, I contacted SI and pitched the idea of putting me on the cover. In a Speedo.

I never heard back.

I also didn’t get responses from the editors of GQ and AARP: The Magazine, who were probably afraid that circulation would plummet if they featured my goofy visage and flabby form on the covers of those otherwise esteemed publications.

So I am hoping that for 2025, there could be a calendar featuring grandparents.

And I could be the star, prominently displayed every month from January (scraping the ice off my car) to July (drinking a beer in a hammock) to December (fumbling with holiday wrapping paper I bought from my grandchildren’s school fundraisers).

Then I could really be a calendar guy. And I could sing my own version of that classic Neil Sedaka song, each and every day of the year.

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima