by TEJ | Apr 23, 2023 | Holiday humor
May is my favorite month for several reasons: The weather is finally turning mild and sunny. The days are getting longer. And it has some fun holidays, like No Pants Day. Yes, that’s a real holiday.
I love the month of May. It’s one of my 12 favorite months. Flowers are blooming. Summer is around the corner. And the air is thick with the sweet aroma of fresh-cut grass (not from my yard, mind you – I usually wait until mid-August to break out the mower – or whenever my wife gets fed up and threatens to make us visit her relatives for a week – whichever comes first).
May is also the time of year when I polish up my golf clubs and head out for my first – and in most years, last – round of golf. That’s because by the seventh hole, I usually remember why I hate that miserable, cruel, soul-crushing sport.
But perhaps one of my favorite aspects of this month involves all the fun holidays that are observed. Of course, there are the major holidays like Star Wars Day on May 4th (so named because then you can say “May the 4th be with you”).
Right on the heels of Star Wars Day comes the always festive holiday Cinco de Mayo, observed on May 5th. I’m not sure what this holiday was originally meant to celebrate. I’m guessing something to do with Mexico’s longstanding love affair with mayonnaise as a condiment.
Then there’s Mother’s Day. But that holiday is only celebrated by people who have moms. Feel free to skip that minor holiday – unless you have a mom or are married to one, in which case, you’d better not forget the date like I did last year. My wife still hasn’t forgiven me. In my defense, the Goodyear 400 NASCAR race was on Fox Sports so I had a very full plate that day.
What many people may not know is that May has several other slightly more obscure holidays every bit as fun as Cinco de Mayonnaise and Start Wars Day. If you’re looking for reasons to play hooky, why not tell your boss you won’t be able to make it into work because you’re celebrating one of these lesser known holidays? Here are just a few of my favorite actual honest-to-God May holidays:
No Pants Day (May 5th)
Celebrated on the first Friday in May, the origin of this holiday dates back to the 1980s. Like most great holidays, it was started by a bunch of drunk college kids (in this case, from the University of Texas) as a prank. It celebrates the freedom from having to conform to a society that requires men to wear pants. It first appeared when a bunch of UT students decided to take off their pants right after finals and parade around campus in their underwear.
May 20th: Be a Millionaire Day (an actual holiday). On this day, you can act like you’re the richest person you know. All you need to celebrate is to start with a million bucks. Either that or marry George Clooney or Dolly Parton.
Surprisingly, not one of the students who instigated this craze has ever won a Nobel Prize – although several apparently went on to distinguished careers as members of the Texas State Legislature. While you’re not legally required to get totally hammered, if you really want to get into the spirit of this holiday, experts say getting sloshed helps. If you’ve never previously tried alcohol, this might be an excellent day to start.
National Talk Like Yoda Day (May 21st)
This holiday was first created in 2003, inspired by the Jedi master’s wisdom and wit. Fans celebrate this important annual tradition by coming together and mimicking the way Yoda talks. On this day, you’ll hear people all over the world – and by “people” I mean males in their twenties who haven’t had a date in a long time – speaking words of supposed great intellect using Yoda’s unusual, high-pitched voice and convoluted sentence structure.
I have to say, it’s highly amusing talking like Yoda. I celebrated this special day last year by asking my wife questions in the style of the diminutive Star Wars character incessantly all day long. I remember it clearly, because that’s the day she screamed in frustration, “Oh my God. I’m married to a seven-year-old!” To which I eruditely replied, “My talking this way annoying you, dear, is it?” Then she made me sleep on the couch. A fan of Yoda not everyone is, concluded have I.
National Lost Sock Memorial Day (May 9th)
Some geniuses decided it was a brilliant idea to set aside one day each year to commemorate all the socks we’ve lost over the decades. What happened to them? How did they meet their tragic fate? Will they ever be reunited in sock heaven?
May 11th: Eat What You Want Day, Celebrate this real holiday by eating whatever you want – as much as you want. If you plan to celebrate by eating all the broccoli you can fit into your pie hole, see a psychiatrist. There’s something seriously wrong with you.
Now there’s an actual holiday to help us honor the memory of these dear departed feet coverings. Even though this holiday technically falls in May, I’ve found that whenever I accidentally show up for a formal, special occasion wearing one black sock and one dark blue one, I simply mention that I’m doing my small part to mourn the loss of two pairs of socks. People rarely ask me any follow-up questions… and usually slowly back away from me.
As much as I love the month of May, in some ways, I love June every bit as much. After all, it’s hard to beat a month that has a holiday called National Chocolate Ice Cream Day (June 7th). I’d better put that date on my calendar before I forget. Looks like someone’s not going to be able to make it into work that day.
That’s the view from the bleachers. Perhaps I’m off base.
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by TEJ | Feb 3, 2020 | Fun and Leisure Humor
Last weekend I did something new and different. I tried a new adventure called an Escape Room. For the uninitiated, escape rooms are the latest fad activity in which they lock 8 to 14 people in a room. The group is given clues and puzzles to solve in order to make their escape. I’m a puzzle person. Sounded like a fun outing.
I invited thirteen of my closest, soon-to-be-ex-friends to join me. The theme of our escape room was Jules Verne’s classic novel, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Our mission: Find the key to escape before our submarine, the Nautilus, ran out of air.
Being a natural-born leader, I assumed the part of legendary Captain Nemo and immediately took charge of this mission. I’m not sure precisely when the mutiny began. It might have been when I ordered my crew to report every five minutes with any new clues they had unearthed. Or maybe it was when I ordered them to swab the decks. Group morale is such a touchy thing.
Turns out escaping from an escape room is an extremely difficult challenge. We had to solve a myriad of puzzles to unlock boxes, only to find inside even more enigmatic puzzles. As the Captain, I quickly came to two important realizations: 1) getting out of this escape room was going to require enormous brain power and concentration, and 2) I did not bring nearly enough money to bribe the staff to tell me what the clues meant.
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by TEJ | Oct 16, 2018 | Fun and Leisure Humor
I recently took a trip back in time, and it did not require inventing a time machine or ingesting any hallucinatory drugs. I simply drove ten miles to a quirky, iconoclastic place in the middle of nowhere called Chumleighland in the Woods. It was named in honor of its owner, Reverend Chumleigh – who, I soon discovered, is not an actual reverend nor is that his real name. So why is it called Chumleighland? Heck if I know. Why did God make the Duck-Billed Platypus? There are some questions to which we may never find the answer.
What a fascinating, strange visit it turned out to be. My wife and I had seen small ads in the local newspaper about this odd-sounding place hidden away in the forest near the southern tip of our island. We had no idea what to expect. We followed Google Maps but when it announced, “You have arrived,” we could not locate anything resembling a building, a park, or even traces of previous human contact.
Suddenly, I spied a tiny sliver of a clearing in the woods, barely wide enough for a refrigerator, with a closed gate. Then out of the thicket emerged an older chap with long grey hair and a scraggly beard. He gave off a Gandalf meets Jerry Garcia kind of vibe. He donned a t-shirt that read “It’s Mueller Time” and featured a cartoon rendering of Robert Mueller in cool-looking sunglasses. “Do you know how we get to Chumleighland?” I asked uncertainly. “Just drive into the grove. Park anywhere and follow the torches. Oh, and watch out for the cats.” That was my introduction to the good Reverend Chumleigh.
We parked by a massive oak tree, as there was no parking lot. Dutifully, we followed the torch-lit path, which meandered beside a miniature train track, like what you’d see at a children’s petting zoo. “Oh, the train should be running again by next week. I just have to clear some felled trees,” explained our ebullient host. Somehow that almost made sense to me. (more…)
by TEJ | Mar 26, 2017 | Fun and Leisure Humor
[WARNING: This blog post contains a visual image which some readers may find offensive and which could cause nightmares. Elderly people, young children and readers with weak constitutions may wish to avoid proceeding further.]
There is something seriously wrong with me. No, I’m not talking about my moderate OCD. Or my phobia of snakes. Or that I listen to Gregorian Chants – even though each one sounds exactly the same.
No, I have an even deeper personality flaw: I’m a chronic people pleaser. Throughout my life, I’ve been hard-wired to want to please people and have sometimes gone to ridiculous lengths not to disappoint them. A few cases in point (all of these are true):
In high school, the class I hated the most was Latin. But my teacher, Mr. Vandenberg, really liked having me as a student. So, at the end of the year, he asked if I’d sign up for Latin 2. I swore I would NEVER take Latin 2. But I caved, because I did not want to disappoint him – which is why I also took Latin 3 the year after that.
In college, I always gave my roommate the bed closest to the window. In grad school, I offered my apartment mate the nicer bedroom. Not because I was a great guy, but because I wanted them to like me.
Once when I was a sales manager my team had a record-breaking quarter. I took them out to celebrate. The reps only wanted one thing from me at the party: to watch me smoke a fat eight-inch cigar they’d bought just for the occasion. I don’t smoke. I’d never smoked anything stronger than a candy cigarette before that moment. But they all were cheering me on, and well, I didn’t want to disappoint. So, I puffed, gasped and choked my way through the entire cigar. It was torture. And they loved that I was a good sport. Then I excused myself to the bathroom so I could throw up.
A few years later, I was boarding a commercial jetliner on a business trip with co-workers. One of them urged me to walk into the cockpit, hold out my boarding pass and tell the pilot with a straight face, “I believe you’re in my seat.” So, I did exactly as he asked. Thankfully, I was not arrested. But that may explain why I’m now on the terrorist watch list.
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by TEJ | Nov 14, 2016 | Fun and Leisure Humor, Lifestyles humor
My wife always complains we don’t do enough things to expand our cultural awareness. Somehow she does not consider The Big Bang Theory enough of an expansion – I keep telling her she’d learn some interesting factoids about particle physics if she just listened to a few Sheldon Cooper rants. Her needling me about my lack of cultural curiosity offends me deeply because I’m an extremely sophisticated, erudite person. As proof, I would point out my usage of the word “erudite” in the previous sentence (which I found on a Google search of obscure, smart-sounding words).
Last summer, my wife and I went to one of those fancy pants, highbrow movie theaters where we saw a Danish film with English sub-titles. Not trying to brag, but I made it almost two thirds of the way through. I even went to a snobby, avant-garde modern art gallery opening once for an exhibit that turned out to be a collection of wooden furniture covered in thousands of nails (I’m not making this up, I swear).
I can endure boring, elitist, over-priced entertainment as well as the next beaten down husband. I’ve gone to the ballet. I’ve stayed awake through several Shakespeare plays – and had a vague idea of who the bad guys were in a couple of them. I even survived a modern dance recital my wife roped me into in which each dancer represented a different vegetable. (I’m pretty sure the guy in the green leotards was a zucchini, but he might have been a cucumber.)
So, don’t tell me I’m not willing to expand my artistic horizons. But every man has a line he won’t cross. And for me, that line is OPERA – that is, until last night, when my wife told me, “Turn off CSI Miami. We’re going to the opera tonight.” Fortunately, I was already wearing my dress shorts.
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