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Saturday marks World Naked Gardening Day, the annual rite when we all tend to the flora while we flaunta the plots normally planted (wisely) beneath our clothes.
What? You didn't know about World Naked Gardening Day? That's a relief. Now I don't have to drive while wearing a blindfold on Saturday.
According to the World Naked Gardening Day website, this is the 12th annual au naturel nurturing nature event. It's celebrated -- without party hats, of course -- on the first Saturday in May.
"Second only to swimming, gardening is at the top of the list of family friendly activities people are most ready to consider doing nude," organizers state in their modesty-free manifesto.
Yeah, right.
I grew up in the country, which is chock full of nature, most of which was poised to rebuff any foolhardy considerations to buff your way through it. My chores included cleaning up after cows, spreading manure and fixing barbed wire fences. I'll keep my coveralls cinched, thanks.
As for the garden, both it and the surrounding fields bristled with spiders, worms, bumblebees, centipedes, scratchy leaves, troublesome vines, briers, jagged stones, and overripe tomatoes that we kids launched at each other when Mom was busy picking a peck of peppers to pickle.
Call us repressed if you wish. I call opting for clothing self-preservation. Plus, I burn easily.
So scratch World Naked Gardening Day off my list of May celebrations. Let's glance at a few other possibilities:
* May 9 -- Lost Sock Memorial Day. Toss out all those single socks that have been lingering in the drawer. Or both socks, if you're a naked gardener.
* May 10 -- Clean Up Your Room Day. Or, as I call it, Take A Nap Day.
* May 12 -- Limerick Day. Writer Edward Lear was born this day in 1812. He popularized limericks in 1846 in his "Book of Nonsense." There once was a writer from Holloway / Who wrote poems in a total nonsense way…
* May 14 -- Dance Like A Chicken Day. For the record, we raised chickens on the farm and not a one of them ever performed the Chicken Dance like at weddings. Nor would I ever advise creating Feed Your Chickens While Naked Day.
* May 16 -- National Sea Monkey Day. They never looked like that sea monkey family pictured on the backs of comic books in the 1960s and '70s.
* May 18 -- Visit Your Relatives Day. This should not be combined with World Naked Gardening Day.
* May 20 -- Be A Millionaire Day. I'm still waiting on for a call from the McDonald's Monopoly Game people.
* May 27 -- Sun Screen Day. Here's the day to be combined with World Naked Gardening Day.
There are plenty of others, including the more traditional Mother's Day and Memorial Day. But if on Saturday, you insist on tip-toeing through the tulips in your bare tootsies, remember the words of the great philosophers Poison: Every rose has its thorn.
And every thorn, I suspect, is equipped with a self-guidance skin-targeting system especially designed by nature for the amusement of naturalists determined to celebrate World Naked Gardening Day.
— Celebrate with Cole at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook. Please dress appropriately.