The 2013 calendar is ready to go up on the wall. Mine cost 50 cents this year and I’m proud to say it’s getting cheaper all the time.
One can easily accumulate dozens of calendars before the start of a new year. Farm dealerships, realtors and all kinds of other businesses hand them out as promotional gifts. Calendars are cheap. Heck, they are often free. And many go to waste.
This office has so far received two calendars from the Alberta Canola Producers Association, one from Case IH, one from a realtor and two more as Christmas gifts.
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But the 50-cent calendar noted above, which shows an entire year at a glance, will take pride of place.
You see, this calendar has been around since 1995. It’s laminated and erasable, so a year’s worth of dates can be written in with a sharpie at the start of each year.
It’s special in part because I didn’t come by it easily. In January 1995, the former editor and I went shopping for Western Producer office supplies. The calendar, with its floral panels of roses, petunias, lilies and tulips, caught my eye where it hung in the office supply store. It was conveniently divided into quarters and had large areas for numbers that catered to myopia. It could potentially beautify the WP’s institutional beige walls and draw attention from the cracked linoleum tile floor in front of my desk.
The price: $9.
The boss said it was too expensive. She was a frugal sort and requests to squander money on fancy stuff were not taken lightly. Besides, said the boss, the newspaper could obtain any number of calendars for free (as noted above.) Why would an extravagant unit be needed, even if it were horticulturally or agriculturally themed?
I did not beg. I did not whine. I did not pout. But I think it fair to say I wheedled. Perhaps even pestered. And in the face of a subtle, passive-aggressive barrage of persuasion, the boss relented.
That calendar has been in use ever since. It adorned my office wall through three different job descriptions in the WP’s Saskatoon head office and now it is smack dab in the middle of the wall in the Lethbridge bureau.
As of 2013, that calendar has cost the Western Producer 50 cents per year, or .0014 cents per day. Unfortunately, that is still more expensive than a freebie.
But if I continue to use it, and pass it down to future generations of Producer reporters, it will eventually depreciate into virtually nothing.
Another year, another lesson in frugality. Happy new year to all.
