The REAL First Day of Spring

The calendar says that March 20 is the first day of spring.  I had two students arguing about the "real" first day of spring the other day.  To understand the argument you have to accept the premise that when you are a teenager the world revolves around you and so what ever you think is real and true.  The one student said that the first day of spring was the first day after winter that he saw a robin. It wasn't the first day that anyone else saw a robin, it had to be him (because...the world revolves around him, remember.) The second student said the first day of spring was marked by the first mosquito bite after winter. Of course he had to be the mosquito bite victim and he was the one with the authority to proclaim spring in the northern hemisphere.  It is interesting that one sign was lovely and positive and the other painful and negative.  It is also interesting that the characteristics of the signs are reflected in the current attitudes of the sign interpreters. 
 All this made me wonder who is the final authority on this first day of spring thing anyway.  I turned to the modern source of all knowledge, Wikipedia. The intriguing part of my shallow research is that this "fact" is not so factual and there is debate about the issue. The meteorologists, astronomists, and  phenologists  (This was a new word for me so if it is also new to you, I'll save you some time.   phenology: the branch of biology that studies the relation between variations in climate and periodic biological phenomena, as the migration of birds or the flowering of plants. ...now back to the original sentence)  do not agree on the definition of spring.  In addition, the Celts and the Chinese have some ancient theories to throw into the mix.  It starts to make the robin and mosquito theories seem less ridiculous.
In the spirit of "spring officially starts when ever you want it to" I have decided that my  spring officially started today.  As I drove to school I some middle school kids riding their skateboards to school.  They were leaning this way and that way and you could just tell they were feeling free. One kid popped up the front wheels and traveled a fair distance on the back two. Another kid hopped over the curb and did a half twist before landing.  He looked so proud (or perhaps relieved) that he did this without a face plant at the end. As I got closer to the elementary school I saw a small boy with a large backpack running to school. His little legs where just churning.  It wasn't close to time for school to begin. He was only a block away but he was running.  It seems like little kids always run, even when they don't have to. 
For some reason these sightings, made me feel a little more awake, a little more alive than I had been the moment before.  It felt like spring ,so I am declaring it as such.