Well, spring has sprung, which means you’re probably reading this with bleary eyes as you continue to reel from our country’s semi-annual custom of treating our circadian rhythms like agitated Bingo balls.
I’m talking, of course, of “springing forward,” our March tradition of celebrating another winter’s passing by stealing a precious hour of sleep from ourselves. The adjustments made for daylight saving time are politically unique in that literally everyone you know, both Republican and Democrat, wants them to stop, yet we continue to zombie march into them twice a year because … well, I have no idea why. I guess feeling jet-lagged for a week despite not having traveled anywhere is too much fun to pass up!
Anyway, that is the bad part. The good part is that we all get to enjoy another springtime in South Jersey (a song title that is just begging to be written), and the subtle sounds of spring are everywhere.
For instance, everyone knows spring means you’ll hear birdsong again, as our avian friends insanely try to find a mate without the help of Hinge or Bumble. But, have you considered the sweet symphony of your retired neighbor firing up his WZ1000 Commercial-Grade Zero-Turn Riding Mower at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning to make sure his lawn doesn’t grow a millimeter past his expectations?
Or that jingling noise? Why, that’s the dads of South Jersey, finally being able to take their extra-large cargo shorts out of the closet and hitch them up over their winter bellies. Sure, every woman who has ever lived has explained that they find cargo shorts as attractive as coffee grounds at the top of the trash can, but we know they secretly love them—especially when paired with our most colorful pair of Crocs!
Springtime is filled with music. Specifically, the sounds of the Mister Softee and Jack and Jill trucks scurrying about your neighborhood like Pac-Man ghosts, bouncing from road to road, activating the needy gene in every kid who hears them. These trucks have the tenacity of post-apocalyptic cockroaches, driving about, playing their siren songs, even on those early spring days when it’s sometimes cold enough that you could make your own ice cream.
It doesn’t matter to your kids, though, who will beg for soft serve when it’s both surface-of-the-sun hot and Hoth-on-a-particularly-bad-night cold. Spring does something magical to kids, who spent all winter being unable to hear when you yelled down the stairs to please load the dishwasher, but can somehow pinpoint the Mister Softee theme being played nine miles away like their ears were being operated by Gene Hackman in The Conversation.
Oh, and that shouting you hear? That’s dozens of fitness boot-camp instructors yelling at their suddenly very full classes, teeming with students who are watching swimsuit season hurtling toward them like a skidding car in a driver’s ed video. (In my experience, there are two types of spring dieters. First, there are the people who understand it takes months to make any kind of substantial bodily change and therefore start their fitness journey on Jan. 1. These kinds of people are widely known to be psychopaths and should be avoided at all costs. The second group, which I am thankfully a part of, knows the best approach to the gym is to show up in early April, tell your trainer you need chiseled abs by Memorial Day, and then give up before taxes are due. Sensible!)
The thousands of beeps you hear every weekday afternoon and weekend morning? Those are cellphone cameras being turned on to capture Youth Sports Parents™ venting inchoate rage in the general direction of umpires, referees, coaches, pitching mounds and/or little orange cones. While you might spot the wild Youth Sports Parent at an occasional wrestling match during the winter, they generally like to hibernate between the end of football season and the start of spring sports, gathering their energy for another season of covering the pain of their own stunted sports dreams by loudly embarrassing their children.
Don’t get me wrong, the vast, vast majority of parents just want to watch their kids play and have fun, but we’ve all been stuck next to an angry, gum-chewing dad who has decided to replace therapy with, you know, volume, and it’s one of the few sounds of spring I could do without.
I travel all over and I know for a fact that when most people think of our great state, they picture the Blade Runner aesthetics of Newark as seen from the Turnpike. I wish they could see (and hear) the South Jersey we all know. Because, even in all that cacophony, there is so much beauty. And, as soon as I recover from springing forward, I’ll get around to enjoying it.
