Happy Dote Upon Yourself Day!
You... you look confused. (That's right. I can see you. Are you creeped out?)
...Big Brother is watching you...
No, just kidding. I know you look confused because I just wished you joy for a holiday that doesn't officially exist. But I tell you this: it is a holiday, one that actually has quite a tradition. It occurs every year on this day: February 13, the day before the most corrupted holiday in history. But more on that later...
Dote Upon Yourself Day was a notion born in our junior year of high school. Before you scoff and ignorantly declare that no good ideas come out of high school students, let's remember that the Zombie Apocalypse Protection Unit might one day be the only thing saving you from total annihilation. Are we agreed that our high school conversations were of merit? Good.
On the day this holiday was first conceived, I was, as usual, sitting against the taupe-colored walls, blocking the hallway with my freakishly long giraffe legs, and gabbing with FoxyFriend and PurpleFriend. That day's subject: the dreaded Valentine's Day.
PurpleFriend had, as usual, been wasting a lot of time on the internet, and had printed off for our reading enjoyment some anti-boy gems, such as, "'Can you feel the love tonight?' Yes, and it's making me want to puke!"
As we pored over these, bursting out into random, raucous laughter, we got on the subject of how awful Valentine's Day was for us single high school girls. The more we talked about it, the more cynical we got. Love -- bah! Boys -- ha! And all that red and pink -- BLUGH!
We came to a decision. No more would we mourn our solitary relationship status on a cheery Hallmark holiday! No more would we swim through a sea of frilly hearts and insincere cliches!
We would create a holiday of our own, to balance the scale, as it were. We would create a holiday in which a woman could turn the attentions and admirations usually directed at males onto a much more deserving target: herself. We would create a guilty pleasures day, and day of indulgence, and Anti-Valentine's Day. And most importantly: NO BOYS ALLOWED!!!
This day had enormous potential! This holiday would be a day to worry about only one person, to toss aside the stress of everyday life and simply relax in whatever way suits you best. Dote Upon Yourself Day is your excuse for an entire day at the spa. For a luxurious bubble bath in low light, with scented candles all around. For braiding hair and painting toenails, and eating as much ice cream, chocolate, and/or McDonald's as you want!
It just so happened that in our junior year of high school, Valentine's Day was on a Saturday. That meant that, quite appropriately, the 13th of February fell on a Friday. We could think of no better day to launch our newly-created holiday than the day before its opposite, and you can bet we took great pleasure launching it on Friday, the 13th.
That first year, we determined the first of many traditions to come. FoxyFriend, PurpleFriend, BlueFriend and I all participated, ignoring the strange looks we received all day (we were quite used to them to begin with). We wore all black, from head to toe, in protest of the varying shades of red and pink that would assault our eyes the next day.
To bedeck our outfits in a holiday-appropriate manner, we also wrote slogans on strips of duct tape. These slogans were statements of our independence as females, and our complete disdain for love (until tomorrow)! PurpleFriend's shirt read, "They say someday my prince will come. I think my prince got lost and is too stubborn to ask for directions," which went well with my, "Love lifts us up where we belong... Yeah, until you hit your head on the ceiling."
The final tradition from that first year was actually deemed optional. FoxyFriend and I, being hard-core and quirky as we always have been, refused to speak to anything with a Y chromosome (excluding teachers and family) for the entire day.
I happen to know that I offended some people following that tradition. I have a very specific memory of walking down the hallway, late for Geometry, next to a boy whom I had always considered to be rather cute, and certainly nicer than most of the other 400 people in attendance at my high school. This was not a normal occurrence. I rarely saw this boy outside of chapel, where he usually sat in the pew directly behind me.
I had never walked alone with this boy in the hallway before, and I would never have it happen again. But of course we did both end up late for geometry on the one day I would refuse to speak to him.
Despite my charades, and despite pointing multiple times at the duct tape wristband advertising the name of the holiday, I don't think I ever managed to communicate to him just exactly why I was dressed all in black and stubbornly silent. I think he was under the impression I was in some kind of weird mourning.
Oh, well.
Although the holiday primarily began as a public statement, it gradually developed quieter traditions. In the eclectic college environment, black clothes and duct tape lost some of its oomph. And although eschewing male conversation was still a noticeable statement, I found myself losing the feeling of novelty and rebellion.
That's when Dote Upon Yourself Day became more like its name. It became a day for me to eat as much popcorn as I could, with as much parmesean cheese as I wanted. It became a day to drink half my stock of Dr Pepper. To watch any movies I so desired. It became a day of true, girly indulgence.
Oh, I still spent plenty of time being cynical about love, in the spirit of the Anti-Valentine's Day we had created it to be. I still get fired up about the terms for people who stay single their whole lives. A man becomes a "bachelor," which by all accounts has pretty good connotations, in general. A woman? Old maid.
But I learned the value of just taking a day to do whatever struck your fancy. Of going on an adventure, if you wanted, or staying in and pigging out, or laying in bed until 3PM before going outside to lay in the sun and read.
One memorable Dote Upon Yourself Day, for instance, was spent in a bowling alley. We laughed at each other's poor scores, and ate pizza like it was going out of style, and started calling Valentine's Day by another name: Single Awareness Day.
Another was spent in my dorm room with Roommate and BrownFriend, painting each other's nails and watching a cheesy movie, and getting into self-renewing laugh cycles that brought our disgruntled suitemates into the room wondeing what the heck we were doing.
This year, I am spending Dote Upon Yourself Day with BrownFriend again. I intend to celebrate the holiday to its fullest.
So I'll say it again:
Happy Dote Upon Yourself Day!
You... you look confused. (That's right. I can see you. Are you creeped out?)
...Big Brother is watching you...
No, just kidding. I know you look confused because I just wished you joy for a holiday that doesn't officially exist. But I tell you this: it is a holiday, one that actually has quite a tradition. It occurs every year on this day: February 13, the day before the most corrupted holiday in history. But more on that later...
Dote Upon Yourself Day was a notion born in our junior year of high school. Before you scoff and ignorantly declare that no good ideas come out of high school students, let's remember that the Zombie Apocalypse Protection Unit might one day be the only thing saving you from total annihilation. Are we agreed that our high school conversations were of merit? Good.
On the day this holiday was first conceived, I was, as usual, sitting against the taupe-colored walls, blocking the hallway with my freakishly long giraffe legs, and gabbing with FoxyFriend and PurpleFriend. That day's subject: the dreaded Valentine's Day.
PurpleFriend had, as usual, been wasting a lot of time on the internet, and had printed off for our reading enjoyment some anti-boy gems, such as, "'Can you feel the love tonight?' Yes, and it's making me want to puke!"
As we pored over these, bursting out into random, raucous laughter, we got on the subject of how awful Valentine's Day was for us single high school girls. The more we talked about it, the more cynical we got. Love -- bah! Boys -- ha! And all that red and pink -- BLUGH!
We came to a decision. No more would we mourn our solitary relationship status on a cheery Hallmark holiday! No more would we swim through a sea of frilly hearts and insincere cliches!
We would create a holiday of our own, to balance the scale, as it were. We would create a holiday in which a woman could turn the attentions and admirations usually directed at males onto a much more deserving target: herself. We would create a guilty pleasures day, and day of indulgence, and Anti-Valentine's Day. And most importantly: NO BOYS ALLOWED!!!
This day had enormous potential! This holiday would be a day to worry about only one person, to toss aside the stress of everyday life and simply relax in whatever way suits you best. Dote Upon Yourself Day is your excuse for an entire day at the spa. For a luxurious bubble bath in low light, with scented candles all around. For braiding hair and painting toenails, and eating as much ice cream, chocolate, and/or McDonald's as you want!
It just so happened that in our junior year of high school, Valentine's Day was on a Saturday. That meant that, quite appropriately, the 13th of February fell on a Friday. We could think of no better day to launch our newly-created holiday than the day before its opposite, and you can bet we took great pleasure launching it on Friday, the 13th.
That first year, we determined the first of many traditions to come. FoxyFriend, PurpleFriend, BlueFriend and I all participated, ignoring the strange looks we received all day (we were quite used to them to begin with). We wore all black, from head to toe, in protest of the varying shades of red and pink that would assault our eyes the next day.
To bedeck our outfits in a holiday-appropriate manner, we also wrote slogans on strips of duct tape. These slogans were statements of our independence as females, and our complete disdain for love (until tomorrow)! PurpleFriend's shirt read, "They say someday my prince will come. I think my prince got lost and is too stubborn to ask for directions," which went well with my, "Love lifts us up where we belong... Yeah, until you hit your head on the ceiling."
The final tradition from that first year was actually deemed optional. FoxyFriend and I, being hard-core and quirky as we always have been, refused to speak to anything with a Y chromosome (excluding teachers and family) for the entire day.
I happen to know that I offended some people following that tradition. I have a very specific memory of walking down the hallway, late for Geometry, next to a boy whom I had always considered to be rather cute, and certainly nicer than most of the other 400 people in attendance at my high school. This was not a normal occurrence. I rarely saw this boy outside of chapel, where he usually sat in the pew directly behind me.
I had never walked alone with this boy in the hallway before, and I would never have it happen again. But of course we did both end up late for geometry on the one day I would refuse to speak to him.
Despite my charades, and despite pointing multiple times at the duct tape wristband advertising the name of the holiday, I don't think I ever managed to communicate to him just exactly why I was dressed all in black and stubbornly silent. I think he was under the impression I was in some kind of weird mourning.
Oh, well.
Although the holiday primarily began as a public statement, it gradually developed quieter traditions. In the eclectic college environment, black clothes and duct tape lost some of its oomph. And although eschewing male conversation was still a noticeable statement, I found myself losing the feeling of novelty and rebellion.
That's when Dote Upon Yourself Day became more like its name. It became a day for me to eat as much popcorn as I could, with as much parmesean cheese as I wanted. It became a day to drink half my stock of Dr Pepper. To watch any movies I so desired. It became a day of true, girly indulgence.
Oh, I still spent plenty of time being cynical about love, in the spirit of the Anti-Valentine's Day we had created it to be. I still get fired up about the terms for people who stay single their whole lives. A man becomes a "bachelor," which by all accounts has pretty good connotations, in general. A woman? Old maid.
But I learned the value of just taking a day to do whatever struck your fancy. Of going on an adventure, if you wanted, or staying in and pigging out, or laying in bed until 3PM before going outside to lay in the sun and read.
One memorable Dote Upon Yourself Day, for instance, was spent in a bowling alley. We laughed at each other's poor scores, and ate pizza like it was going out of style, and started calling Valentine's Day by another name: Single Awareness Day.
Another was spent in my dorm room with Roommate and BrownFriend, painting each other's nails and watching a cheesy movie, and getting into self-renewing laugh cycles that brought our disgruntled suitemates into the room wondeing what the heck we were doing.
This year, I am spending Dote Upon Yourself Day with BrownFriend again. I intend to celebrate the holiday to its fullest.
So I'll say it again:
Happy Dote Upon Yourself Day!
Happy Dote Upon Yourself Day to you too! (For the five minutes left of it). I have to say, your links of bachelor and old maid made me laugh because I instinctively paired the two together in my mind...tehe. I appreciate your explanation of the day to the masses as well.
ReplyDeleteOh, and final question, who was the boy??? Feel free to reply with his name in TAC...I'm just curious! :-)
Wow, what a pairing those two would be... yikes! Thanks for the good wishes -- my Dote Upon Yourself Day was just wonderful! I hope yours was, too. It is definitely a holiday that deserved a blog post.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind saying that the boy in question was Ford Hillin. A very nice boy. And I probably confused/offended him that day. Whoops.