Today, January 30, marks the eve of William Had a Heachache Day, an illustrious holiday held in honor of the Western world's very own William Wordsworth.
Why honor him, you ask? Because you can.
The story is as follows:
Romantic Literature, Grove City College, 2003. A group of very bored students and one bored professor (don't deny it, Dr. Potter) finally escape the clutches of Wordsworth's many and endless poems of self-scrutiny and take a peek into the journal of his sister and nearly lifelong caretaker Dorothy -- only to discover that the journal is filled with endless maternal reactions of scrutizing William. (Not to mention phrases which William quite blatantly stole to put into his poems.) The students struggle with feelings of pity for Dorothy, whose life revolved around her brother to the extent that she recorded how grateful she was that she followed his advice to wear wool socks on chilly day, and scorn for William, who must have looked like an addled idiot mooning around lying under the trees , gathering sticks and feeling ill while those around him struggled to make a decent living.
With no apparent means of connecting to this bizarrely codependent sibling pair, the students continue reading exerpts from the Grasmere Journal of 1802 and make a sudden, startling discovery: On January 31st, Dorothy recorded, "Wm had slept very ill -- he was tired and had a bad headache."
A legacy is born.
Three students from that class -- Marianne, John, and myself -- began a quest to sympathize with William. We decided to celebrate William Had a Headache Day as the entirety of this pursuit. Here's how the celebration is conducted: On the night of Januray 30th we go out drinking, so that on the day of the 31st we too can say that we slept very ill, are tired and have a bad headache.
We want to see this holiday on the calendar, some glorious day in the future. In the meantime, we are spreading it to whomever we can. So grab a beer and celebrate tonight, if it fits within your moral compass. (Don't worry, Mom, I'm moderate as ever.) Let's indulge one of the few opportunities that exist to understand what it's like in the mind of William Wordsworth.
Ole!
7 comments:
Sure, laugh now, but two hundred years from now there are going to be bored English majors celebrating Sarah Gets Out the Vicks VapoRub Day and Sonia Got a Parking Ticket Day.
Hahaha, I can just imagine the lascivious rituals evolving from Sarah Got out the Vicks VapoRub Day. As to Sonia Got a Parking Ticket Day...maybe you can convince millions to violate parking regulations.
Does Dr. Potter read your blog? Because that would probably be the coolest thing ever. Cooler even than creating your own holiday which, in and of itself, is pretty cool.
Cool as it would be, I doubt it.
Oh, I did reference him to your blog, though. To catch up on our Harry Potter speculations.
Does that mean I should remove the derogatory comments I made about Mrs. Dr. Dixon's driving, or can I trust that Dr. Potter would be discrete?
Dr. Potter is the soul of discretion, as you should very well know. He's kept enough of OUR derogatory comments to himself. (He never let us mention any names though.)
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