Jack McNamara
Earth Day is on Thursday, and not a day too soon. My mom is already calling and asking when I’ll be home, but I can’t leave until I buy Earth Day gifts for everyone in my family (They’ll probably just be some more Fairfield University shirts, just like the last Earth Day). Man, I hope my parents haven’t already decorated the Earth Day tree.
It’s a bit of an unusual way to mark April 22nd, and I’m well-aware that others do it a little differently. For those of you non-English majors out there who were never really able to come up with a clear-cut definition of irony, it’s distributing paper leaflets for Earth Day. We can thank a benevolent and caring God it’s only Earth Day once a year, as the amount of brightly-colored paper stuffed into students’ mailboxes at this school has probably destroyed entire fluorescent rainforests of green, orange and pink hues.
Such an instance I think, is a complication of what I believe to be an Earth Day PR problem. When I was younger and apparently something of a space jingo (also, an idiot), I thought Earth Day was a celebration of the Earth being better than all the other planets in the solar system. I mean, what other celestial body is going to have such an honor? Neptune? That big, blue gassy IDIOT? Not on my watch!
Even so, there are plenty of other ways you can have fun marking this year’s Earth Day. For example, you could name your town in Texas after the Earth, which I guess is what must have happened at some point in the small township of Earth, Texas – a place where every day is Earth Day. How exactly does one wind up with that name in particular? Not to be rude to all the Texans out there reading the Fairfield Mirror, but the name ‘Earth’ has already been taken… by the Earth. Clearly a change in nomenclature is in order, and since I’ve always been a bit of philanthropist, I give the Town of Earth, Texas, full permission to start calling itself ‘Jack,’ effective immediately. Town of Jack, you are welcome.
Earth Day gifts aside, I’d like to close by thanking Earth Day for being such a good sport throughout the column. Earth Day, if you haven’t already figured this out, I don’t really hate you at all.
No, what I hate is Arbor Day. Arbor Day is a poser.
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