Your new 2023 calendar can set the tone for your entire year. After all, you’ll see it with each new month, each quick check of the date, and each missed meeting because you put the time on your wall calendar instead of entering it into your calendar app like everyone else. Do you really want that tone to be “pooping pooches”?
I mean, don’t you have visions of glory in the new year? A fresh start? Or does this calendar actually work, since your new year’s resolution was “do not grow as a person”?
Also, others might see this calendar. As Oprah says, “You teach people how to treat you.” And this calendar will teach everyone to treat you like a ridiculous person who probably still laughs at fart jokes or giggles when a grown man says he goes by the name “Dick,” which, honestly, is kind of fair.
Think about all the other choices you could make instead. You could choose a calendar filled with inspirational quotes or phrases of empowerment. Wouldn’t you like to head off to that big January work meeting with the words of Helen Keller or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson fresh in your memory?
You might also consider a calendar featuring a famous artist’s work. Then you can pretend you have class in a kind of generic way. Or what about one of those fun travel calendars, maybe one set in Italy or France? Then, if anyone comments on it, you have an excuse to bring up your college semester abroad. Again.
Another good option is a calendar with pictures of quilts. People will think you’re whimsical or folksy. You might even embrace the vibe and start wearing suspenders.
Then again, you could get a calendar with baby animals (not pooping). You could spend the year calling everything “cute” while remaining all too aware of the fragility of new life in this cruel cruel world. Or maybe you could just get a calendar with pictures of fish for some reason.
Oh, and there’re a ton of car calendars. Muscle cars or trucks. Race cars or old-timey classics. Then everyone will know you’re willfully uninteresting.
Honestly, anything is better than a “pooping pooches” calendar, even a completely bland lighthouse calendar. No one could possibly find pictures of lighthouses offensive, except maybe the ghosts who live inside them. And the calendar could inspire you to go on an ocean-based adventure or the depressing family-friendly equivalent: a Disney cruise.
Either way, it’s an improvement. And, in 2023, it might set you up for success in a way “pooping pooches” just can’t.
So, how about it? Why don’t you just put down that “pooping pooches” calendar. You can laugh one more time (if you must) and then pick anything else. A horse calendar. One with sunsets. Or one you made yourself via Shutterfly, filled with meaningful, personal images of the people you love, the pets you love (again, not pooping), or all the different cheeses.
As Robert Frost once wrote for a poetry calendar, “Two roads diverged in the woods, and I took the one that does not involve a poodle scrunched up like an accordion and slowly inching forward as it stares ahead with determination and just a bit of embarrassment while feeding a butt burrito to the ground. And that has made all the difference.”
The point is, you have a chance to start 2023 right. And you can’t be number one this year if you’re busy laughing about dogs going number two.
