The Eyes of March?

Beware the eyes of March? Beware the hides of March? Huh? Oh, beware the IDES of March... yeah, 'cause that makes sense...

Nicole and I are in the car on a Sunday afternoon and I realize it's March 1st. Remarking that it's March already, Nicole agrees and says "beware the ides of March!" We sit in silence for a few seconds before she admits, "I have no idea what that means..." Neither do I, I say, except that I know it's March 15th and has something to do with Caesar.

Later that night we mention it to friends who also know that the ides of March is the 15th of the month and they think Caesar might have been killed on that day. Ahhh... Yeah, still not making much sense to us! Although we do warn our friend Caesar just in case and she said she dutifully stays at home with a baseball bat that day.

Like we do with everything we want to know more about, we google it. (This past week alone we googled "big blue arches on I-94," "ACC tournament 2009," "life is good grow," and "March madness 2009.")

I heart google. We google everything.

So, in case you also wondered, the ides of March is March 15th and the saying "beware the ides of March" does indeed refer to the day that Caesar was killed. Apparently a soothsayer warned Caesar that he would meet his peril on that day, but Caesar didn't listen and walked right into an ambush and was murdered.

But the ides wasn't always a terrible day. In the Roman calendar, the "ides" of a month simply referred to the 13th or the 15th of the month when the moon was full. It just so happened that way back in 44 B.C. some big political figure in another part of the world was murdered on the ides. If it had been a few months later, we'd be saying "beware the ides of June."

Yep, that's it. Not very exciting, is it? I think I'll start saying "Happy Ides Day!" instead. I think it's high time March 15th stopped getting such a bad rep.