Many folks hold to the belief that time is fleeting

that it passes us by at an accelerated speed and at an increasing velocity.

Wrong!

Although time is relentless in its ongoing forward march and thus waits for no man, you can't measure it in days the way you can money because every day is different.

However, we have found that time is actually money and therein lies a conundrum, a problem admitting of no satisfactory solution.

While time flits by for some folks, it is a tediously slow-moving element for many others.

A lot of people are wedded to the notion that time keeps on getting shorter as we keep flipping the pages of the calendar.

That thought is held fast by most of us in our advancing years.

But Shakespeare may have had something when he said that time creeps in its petty pace from day to day until its last syllable is recorded.

Be all the above as it may, the intended purpose of this meditative piece is to decry and censure the grey flannel suited ones of Fifth Avenue who single out an unconscionable number of days and weeks for special recognition.

What those admen are doing is reaching into our pocketbooks so that "special" recognition and homage may be paid for by special donations or gift purchases commemorating the various periods in question.

We have Mothers' Day, Fathers' Day, Doctors' Day, Nurses' Day, Labor Day and a multiplicity of other days that go largely to deplete our meager bank accounts.

Although we have not made an actual count of it, there must be well over 1,000 days singled out for our oberservance each year. Many of them overlap.

Likewise, there must be a minimum of some 300 to 400 "special" weeks each year.

The same type thing goes for months and years, too.

Pulling all those pocketbook-milking observances into one big wad, we come out with at least four to five years worth of observance time each year.

Enough, I say, before we go further and start in on decade and century specials

we're close enough now to the poorhouse, thank you.