A Holiday for Me

Finally, a holiday I can sink my teeth into: National Babbling Day. And if it weren't for the likes of James Lileks, a black-belt babbler if I've ever met one, I would have missed it.

So here's some babbling:

Babble!

BABBLE!

babble babble babble babble babble

BAAAAAAAABBBBBLLLLLEEEEE.

As I'm no stranger to babbling myself, the preceding babblings are probably not necessary. Pull up any random blog entry here and you'll find a babbling fool. The irony of the situation is that, verbally, I'm a very quiet, reserved individual who actually has difficulty communicating comfortably. Put me behind a keyboard or at the wheel of a pen and a bit of paper, however, and I go absolutely nuts.

If you're like me and anal about such things, you'll notice one glaring error if you click on the link to take you to the declaration of National Babbling Day. Every October 21th? That hurts just typing it, let alone seeing it here. Now, I'm no stranger to the occasional typo, but something like that just stabs at the eye and makes me bleed, especially seeing as I can do nothing to fix it except set myself up as one of those Internet Grammar Nazis you've read so much but know so little about.

But back to babbling. When it comes to babbling, I feel like Grandpa Simpson: "Nothing can keep me from my meddling!" But, in my case, it's babbling. Plenty of things keep me from it, though. Especially if I'm called on to babble with my voice and not fingers on the keyboard, which I've already covered in this post, so we won't go there again.

The folks who trumpet National Babbling Day can't seem to put a finger on the day's origins. I like to think it originated iwth one of our caveman ancestors, bored to ears as the winter outside the cave dragged on, so he, with a little pot of ochre, babbled and babbled and babbled in pictogram form on the wall until summer arrived, and then he went out to get more ochre.