What day is this anyhow? BERNARD EPPS
Where am I? What day is it? Every morning when I wake up and try to orient myself by turning on the channel that offers "All the news - All the time," I'm told things like "This is "Take Your Secretary to Lunch Day" or "Take Your Daughter to Work Day."
Earthworm Week. National Headache Month. The International Year of the Oceans.
Who decides these things? And where do I find a calendar that keeps everything straight for me? I've been carefully saving a red foam-rubber nose but have entirely lost track of Red Nose Day. When's Peanut Day this year?
I did work out that Grandparents' Day falls on September 6 because it's the first Sunday after Labor Day. But the divorce rate must have given us a Step-Father's Day or a Birth-Mother's Day and I might want to keep track.
The practice of dedicating days to one thing or another has become so pervasive that they even have a National Nothing Day. One day a year set aside to commemorate nothing at all.
My calendar is no help because it's a Christmas present from New Zealand and says December 22 is the longest day of the year, puts Father's Day in September, and Labor Day on October 26. It neglects Dollard Des Ormeaux and St-Jean-Baptiste but lists Waitanga Day, Hawke's Bay Anniversary Day, and Anzac Day. The global village threatens to freight each day unbearably.
Lennoxville, Quebec, has its own Friendship Day in June and Winter Fun Day in February.
Shouldn't there be some central registry office to keep track? There's St. Patrick's Day, St. Andrew's Day, and Robbie Burns' Day, Sadie Hawkins Day, Pancake Day, and even Bloom's Day commemorating Leopold Bloom, a fictional character.
Any excuse for a party, eh? Any more and we'll have to start celebrating New Year's Eve and keep right on to December 31. Then nobody will give a hoot what day it is. Bernard Epps writes in Lennoxville, Quebec.
© 1998 Bernard Epps/Log Cabin Chronicles/8.98 |