I’m not especially fond of snakes.

No, that’s not right.  I can’t stand snakes.  No, that’s still not right.  I hate them.  No, “hate” isn’t right, either.  What is the right word?  Loathe?  Despise?  Abhor?  Detest?  Fear?

Yes, that’s it.  Fear.  I fear snakes.  I fear them a lot.

I know this is not a manly thing to admit.  Men are not supposed to be afraid of such things.  After all, little boys are at least in part made of “snakes and snails,” aren’t they?

Which reminds me, I’m not especially fond of escargot, either.

But snakes scare me to death.  I nearly walked out of the first Indiana Jones movie when the Nazis threw Indy and his female companion into the pit filled with snakes (only Nazis could be that diabolical).  The shot of a snake slithering out of a statue’s mouth just about did me in.

“One more snake,” I told my date, “and I'm outta here.”        

Thankfully, snakesmanship wasn’t a high priority with my date.  She married me anyway. 

A few years ago I was walking along a mountain road with my two youngest children when we came upon a small garter snake sunning itself on the pavement.  I ran screaming to the other side of the road, startling the snake into a forked-tongued frenzy and sending Jon and Elizabeth into a fit of hysterical laughter.  They thought I was trying to be funny.

I wasn’t.

That said, there is one thing that I find fascinating about snakes.  Two or three times each year they go through a process called “molting,” during which they slither out of their scaly old skin and emerge to face the world in a scaly new skin – repulsive though it may be.  According to hissologists (or whatever you call people who study such things), snakes don’t shed their skins for aesthetics.  I mean, it’s not like they get the urge for a new outfit or anything like that.  There are important physiological factors having to do with their growth and development.  Simply stated, if snakes don’t make this change on a regular basis they will die.

The same is true for humans, I think.  Not the skin thing.  The change thing.  If we don't make changes on a regular basis, we’ll die.  At the very least, we’ll stop growing and developing, which is sort of like dying only without the resting in peace.

That’s why it’s a good thing that spring comes around every year.  While it’s true that spring weather can be unpredictable, with clear skies one minute and thunderstorms the next, and spring cleaning can be painful and/or traumatic, depending on the snap in your family taskmaster’s whip, it is also undeniably true that spring is a season of renewal.  Which makes it the perfect time for humans to shed the time-worn, travel-weary skin of habit and emerge to face the world clothed in a spanking new skin of adjusted attitudes and better behaviors.  Of course, we can make those changes at any time – not just in the spring.  But there’s something about spring that brings with it the extra vigor and vitality that significant change requires.

And that’s just what we need to do this spring, we need to change.  We all do.  Whether it’s a minor peccadillo or a major character flaw, we need to fix it.  If it needs to be altered, alter it.  If it needs to be adjusted, adjust it.  And if it needs to be eliminated, eliminate it.  But do it now.  Today.  This week.  This spring.  Off with the old skin!  On with the new!  That’s how we grow.  That’s how we develop.  That’s how we change.  And change, said John F. Kennedy, “is the law of life.”

For humans as well as snakes.