Half Empty, or Half Full?

In football games, half-time is celebrated by parading a marching band across the field.  In my high school, this was an activity that involved great precision.  Boys and girls of all sizes and shapes wore military-type regalia and pretended to look identical, from the high-flying plumes on their hats to the bleach-white spats on their shoes.   They played richly orchestrated pieces from Purcell to pop, marched a fixed number of steps per ten-yard interval, and morphed from straight lines to circles with ease.  Our marching band practiced after school, logging as many—if not more—hours of practice than the football team.  Combining a color guard, a rifle core, and the largest percussion section on natural turf, it was a resplendent backdrop to which onlookers refilled their drinks and use the bathroom.

This is all in sharp contrast to my college, where during halftime, a sloppily clad band of misfits took the field at the shot of a starting pistol, spelling out a four-letter word which then morphed into another while the band played on.  If you were lucky enough to discern what the band was playing, it was possible to get the joke intended by the wordplay.  If you didn’t, well, you could refill your drink and go to the bathroom.

On navy ships and cruise ships, it is custom to have a ceremony when crossing the equator.  A court of Neptune presides over the indoctrination of slimy pollywogs as they are turned into shellbacks.  In the military, this event requires the neophyte wogs to perform displays of strength and bravery officiated by the shellbacks.  On cruise ships, they simply refill your drinks until you excuse yourself to the bathroom.

In corporate America, it is not uncommon to celebrate “hump day” as the middle of the work week.  In my office, Wednesday afternoon was a popular time to go out to lunch with co-workers.  When my husband was in dental school, pursuing a 5-year program that was—at the time—the longest required curriculum of any degree program at Harvard, hump day was a much anticipated event.   On the 868^th day of their program, his class threw the mother of all hump day celebrations.  After considerable drinking, they strode like Goths into the elegant marble vomitorium of Petronius Arbiter, making a legendary mess of the bathroom.

I have always found it a bit curious that we like to celebrate a job half-done.  Today is the day that I begin the second half of my yearlong blogging challenge.  As I anticipated this day’s arrival, I realized that half-time celebrations are less to memorialize the first half of a task than to urge the titans onward to completion.  The glass is now half full.  I need the encouragement of a celebration—something that lets me know that the remaining labors are ever less than what I have already achieved.  It makes the impossibility of this task seem somehow manageable.

Tomorrow's blog:  Best Laid Plans