Yes, January 31st marks the famous holiday Backwards Day. What's that you say? You don't know about this holiday?
Okay, so not all holidays are winners. There are 365 -- sometimes 366 -- days a year. We are going to run into some filler holidays here and there. This is definitely one of them. Even the instructions on how to celebrate it, found on timeanddate.com, are clearly reaching:
"Go to bed in the morning and start working in the evening ... Talk to people with your back toward them ... Say goodbye to people when you meet them, and hello when you depart."
Look, you're going to spend half of your day explaining to everyone why you are dressing like Kriss Kross and talking in gibberish. This may be a good holiday to leave unobserved. Plus, a lot about the world right now feels backward and turned all around. No need to give people another reason to think the world has gone crazy.
The holiday did remind me of an old diary entry I wrote as a child. I've kept a journal on and off for years. Sometimes I write faithfully every day. Other times the journal sits untouched for months. My favorite part about journaling -- besides documenting my socially awkward interactions and keeping a running list of my enemies -- is going back and reading it years later. If you ever want evidence that you have grown as a person, and yet you are exactly the same, go back and read something you wrote as a nine-year-old. From then until now, my journals have consistently been frenetic. Jumping from a daily rundown of what happened at home... to a rant of anger about something or someone who wronged me ... to a cataloging of my favorite things. (Then: stuffed animals. Now: one-pot recipes.) At nine or thirty-three, the same lack of discipline and focus is there. It's the only place where I enjoy a lack of structure.
Anyway, back to Backwards Day. A few months ago I found my very first diary and thoroughly enjoyed how ridiculous I sounded. It seems fitting to share on this holiday. To give you the full impact, here is a picture of it. I feel like the visual really adds to the entry.
In case you can't decipher my scrawled, penciled handwriting -- and believe me, this is one of my better efforts -- here is a translation:
Dec 21, 1992
Dear Diary,
Hi! Guess What! I'm off for vacation! I get 2 weeks of no school! Not that I have anything against school, but enough is ENOUGH!
We're having Christmas at our house. I got Anna a E C A L K C E N and a G N I R. The G N I R has a jewel in it, and so does the E C A L K C E N. I wonder what I got?
Were going to see Aladdin! It's suposed [sic] to be great!
Fin.
That's right. Just in case my sister tried to snoop in my diary to figure out what she was getting for Christmas, I had a foolproof plan: WRITE IT IN CODE. There's now way she's cracking this one. It's indecipherable.
If only this entry had fallen on January 31, 1992 ... That would have been so perfect!
Final fun fact: penguins can't walk backward. Again, in 2017, continue to be the penguin. No backsliding.
Happy Backwards Day!
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