I Declare it International Are You Kidding Me Day

Because everyone else seems to have a nutty holiday, I've invented my own.  Today, in this Blog, I declare it International Are You Kidding Me Day. Come to think of it, every day we have a "What" or "Why" or "Things I Can't Believe I Ever Said or Heard" type post, I think we should declare it International Are You Kidding Me Day.  Today's post falls in the general category of "What Were They Thinking?"

Anyway, as you can guess, I was looking at the roster of goofy holidays again.  Today, I am talking about April 30.  Of course, I should have gotten my act together and wrote about this in time for April 30th itself, but I was a little bit preoccupied writing the two part story of the mouse that got away and then came back to share its last moments with me.

According to My Time Calendars, April 30th was Hairstyle Appreciation Day.  Now, I'm curious.  Am I supposed to be admiring your hairstyle, and perhaps compliment you on it, or is this observance really subtitled, "Tip Your Stylist Day"  What do you think?  I am a touch curious about how this particular observance got started, because perhaps I might figure out the purpose, but if I start down the road of looking up one of these crazy holidays, I will want to look them all up, and there goes the week.

My decision to write this post, though, has little to do with Hairstyle Appreciation Day.  Everyone else has their holiday, so why not hairstyles?  I have no problem with that.  I have a problem with the fact that Hairstyle Appreciation Day apparently falls on the same day as National Honesty Day.

Now, there I have to draw the line.  First of all, in the perfect world inside my head, I think every day is National Honesty Day.  One of my all time pet peeves is when someone says, "Now, to be honest...."

Stop right there.

"To be honest?"  Well, "to be honest," if you ever came up to me and said, "to be honest," I am very likely to put my hand up and say:

"Oh no.  Don't be honest.  I prefer if you just lie to me instead." (No, really.  I do say that to people.)

I don't know what you guys think, but to me, the phrase, "To be honest" is an admission that almost everything else you said up until that time was a lie.

Er, you didn't mean that you were lying to me before now, did you?

I feel similar about the phrases, "To be perfectly honest" (which is, I feel compelled to add, redundant), and "To be frank" or "To be perfectly frank." Er, were you disengenous before, or are you having an identity crisis and you want to metamorph into someone you have met named "Frank"?  Which is it?

Every word matters.  What are your filler words saying about you that you wish they wouldn't? 

Moving aside from my bias against "filler words" and open expressions of honesty, I have to wonder, which holiday came first, and which creators weren't looking when they picked their day?  In the fabric of our social society, can the holidays of Hairstyle Appreciation Day and National Honesty Day really go together?  Are we capable of celebrating both?  What if you run into a client or acquaintance who just got a really nasty looking haircut?  Do you stumble around and appreciate it as best as you can with a straight face, even if you are lying, or do you tell the truth and let them know they look like a shaggy dog?  Do you have to publicly declare at the beginning of the day that you are only observing one holiday or the other?  Do you have to tell the people you are talking to that you are observing one, the other, or both?

Man, these are tough questions.  I think the whole situation was avoidable if whoever declared their holiday second had picked a different day.  We should start a petition to get one of these days moved.  Heck, let's move 'em both and just celebrate International Are You Kidding Me Day.