Holidays I Didn't Get Around To Last Time

I set out to write my previous post about various holidays, but I ended up having too much to say about Christmas. Let's see if I can stay on track this time.

Birthdays are my second favorite time of year (after Christmas). I know that the older we get, the more miserable we're supposed to be about getting older, but my aging brain hasn't gotten the message yet. Maybe it's because I've always had this problem of living for the moment and never planning ahead. Consequently, on my birthday I'm focused strictly on the day itself and not my impending decrepitude.

When I was working and my birthday fell on a weekday, I always made sure I could take the day off; I didn't need pesky projects and meetings to interfere with my happiness. Of course, the workplace can be fun, especially when your coworkers fill the office with black Mylar balloons. Then, around midafternoon, you might walk into the lunchroom on a break and find everyone gathered around a cake bought just for you. Last time I was surprised like that, just one little candle burned in the center --  I had reached the age when it would be too labor-intensive to put in all the rest. I could sense that not all of my coworkers were happy about this cake, since I've rarely worked anyplace where donuts didn't magically appear in the lunchroom every other day. A cake was just one more reason to keep your hopeless treadmill in the basement.

My mother threw me a birthday party when I turned seven. My mother liked kids if they were hers, but I invited about a dozen and a half schoolmates to this event. So anyway --

Whoops, never mind. I forgot to focus on other holidays, and I don't want to stretch this topic into mid-August.

Labor Day

The best and worst thing about Labor Day: Jerry Lewis. The Muscular Dystrophy Telethon was probably his greatest achievement (well, besides The Nutty Professor), but he refused to change with the times. In the new millennium he was still featuring some of the same guests he'd had on in the 1960s (40 years of Norm Crosby was way more than enough), and his taste in music and beautiful women (they had to be beautiful, it seemed, to be his co-hosts) was growing out of fashion. The older and sicker he got, the more naps he took during the show. I wasn't surprised when he finally disappeared altogether, but I think it was horrid the way MDA unceremoniously dumped him. Then the next year the telethon was only six hours long. They showed a brief tribute to Lewis, which I thought was just hypocritical. By last year, the show was dramatically shorter (I think it aired between two commercials for Coke and Nissan). Not only were the hosts pointedly young, but I suspect the performers were chosen because their fans have no idea who Jerry Lewis is. The telethon got to be a tradition with me through its good times and its bad (sort of like SNL). One year, I even took calls for the full length of the show at MDA's remote hookup in Miami (back before volunteers were split into two shifts to preserve sanity). Nowadays, there's only one way to really recapture the essence of the Jerry Lewis MDA experience: find a copy of Hardly Working. It was the comeback film Lewis made after The Jerk opened; he wanted to remind people who the original jerk was. (I'm serious -- that was the tagline of the movie.) I call it an MDA experience because the film was shamelessly, hilariously filled with product placements from the telethon's most loyal sponsors. Budweiser, Dunkin' Donuts, 7 Up, the U.S. Postal Service -- they're all there, and trust me, you won't miss them if you blink. You won't even miss them if you doze off, which you're likely to do.

Halloween

I'm conflicted about this one. As a kid, I enjoyed going out. I liked everything about it -- the candy, waiting to put on my store-bought costume and mask that came in a box with a cellophane cover, the candy, being allowed to roam the streets after dark, and of course the candy. During the '80s and part of the '90s, I stopped liking the idea of it because it was "sinful." These days, if I had kids, I'd let them go trick or treating, but I'd have to be with them because this isn't the world I grew up in, and I'd prefer they didn't dress up as flesh-eating zombies or tweenie trollops. Kids can't find my door now, but back when I lived in a busier neighborhood, I'd always go somewhere else on Halloween night and come home after 10 p.m. A ringing doorbell can make me jumpy when it happens 20 times in an hour. (I still bought the candy, though. Why waste a perfectly good holiday?)

April Fool's Day

It would have to be a brilliant, and I mean brilliant, prank for me to enjoy it. Also, it would need to happen to someone else.

Fourth of July

I like looking at fireworks, but not listening to them. They frighten animals and can seriously mess with PTSD. Plus, amateurs seldom know what they're doing and have a way of losing digits in the process. I do like what the holiday stands for, though, and I like that so many people, as with Memorial Day, really do remember its meaning.

Indigenous Peoples' Day

Last year, the Seattle City Council decided to rename Columbus Day. I don't even have a punch line for this.