A Different Drum: Don’t try to combine national day celebrations

I get such a kick out of nationally dedicated days: to the point I have a huge book containing oodles of them, a wall calendar featuring monthly samplings of them, and a subscription that has a collection of national days popping up on my email daily.

Now, most of you are probably thinking to yourself that today must have been designated as “National Get a Life Day” for someone like me to seemingly have nothing better to do than gush over national day designations. Fair enough. But we all have our own pockets of geekiness. It’s whether we choose to reveal them that gets us branded as certifiably geeky. Some of us choose to wear our geek on our cheek. How chic.

I’m not sure why I find national day designations so very interesting, but I do. Sometimes it’s because the topics are absurdly specific or obscure. Other times, it’s because they’re such an odd hodge-podge aggregate of ideas that have little, if anything, in common outside of having landed on the same calendar square, which was not part of any grand design. At least not one that’s obvious. Right, Lord?

A case in point occurred June 5 this year, on which National Veggie Burger Day, National Moonshine Day and National Gingerbread Day all fell. I got a kick out of thinking what an interesting eclectic party to throw, as I don’t see a lot of commonalities among the stereotyped-in-my-mind people who have set up camp in those respective camps.

I mean, my mother absolutely loved her gingerbread. She made gingerbread cakes and claimed her favorite activity was making gingerbread cookies with her grandchildren. Another gingerbread pastime for which she was well known was reading “The Gingerbread Man” story to anyone who would listen.

It tickled her at the close of the book to see the clever fox eat the cocky and flamboyantly-dressed gingerbread man as the fox ferried the flashy cookie chap across the river. That’s why I took the book with me to the long-term care facility where Mom resided after her dementia worsened: gingerbread tales were some of the few things that remained able to work their way into the cracks of plaques and tangles of her mind.

When her mind was more intact, there was no way my mother would have eaten a veggie burger or knowingly or voluntarily associated with anyone who would. At my dad’s insistence, we had meat every meal: beef and pork (he had grown up eating too much poultry that he’d also had to help butcher, so it ruined chicken for him).

And moonshine? Mom had never seen the stuff up-close-and-personal, but only on TV shows such “The Beverly Hillbillies,” which featured Irene Ryan as Granny, perpetually toting the familiar brown jug. Moonshine people are an intriguing bunch. And moonshine rules rule. Although the making, distribution and drinking of it may technically be illegal, some states overlook those restrictions in small quantities with the promised of shared product.

I’m having trouble picturing moonshine types hanging with the gingerbreaders and/or shooting the breeze with the veggie burger-eaters. Talk about oil and water not mixing! It’s a wonder they don’t turn their shared calendar square into a boxing ring. So it’s a good thing I’ve learned over time that if you don’t like today’s national day designations, there’s always tomorrow’s!

Unfortunately, a peek ahead to the occasion celebrations for June 6 showed an equal number of warring factions: National Eyewear Day (I can see clearly now), National Higher Education Day (things can only go up), National Drive-in Movie Day (could be educational!), National Gardening Exercise Day (boo-hiss), National Yo-Yo Day (a sanctioned occasion for stringing someone along), National Applesauce Cake Day (gingerbread is better) and Russian Language Day (decidedly Greek to most of us).

Can I just do this national day thing until I need to wear glasses? No? Then I will need to retreat to June 5, which I understand has also been designated as National Start Over Day. What’s not to like about that? In my opinion, it rates more than one day on the calendar. For instance, whenever we forget it’s not wise to combine national day celebrations.

— Kristy Smith’s Different Drum humor columns are archived at her blog: diffdrum.wordpress.com.

This article originally appeared on Sturgis Journal: A Different Drum: Don’t try to combine national day celebrations