Not many people may know this, but today, July 6th, is, in fact, a holiday.
At least for me, and maybe two other girls if they even remember.
When I was in fifth grade, in 1998, one day the teacher split us up into groups to work on the project of creating our own holidays.
Ever the loner, the only couple of friends I had in school weren't in my class that year, so I was grouped with two girls, Jamie and Amy, who were best friends. Jamie was nice enough, but Amy and I actually had some pre-teen girl beef between us already by that point, (it's a long story, one that's actually detailed a bit here in my main blog if you're curious, but I'd had a falling out with the "popular" girls after briefly joining their clique, and Amy had taken my place in the group when I was ousted.) so she wasn't thrilled to be working with me.
The thing about Jamie, Amy, and I was that we were all on the quieter side; not one of us was assertive enough to take control of the situation and really come up with an idea. Finally, a far more outgoing girl who was sitting near us with her group, suggested we all write an idea down on a piece of paper and then she would pull one of them randomly and decide. That seemed fair enough.
My idea was International Animal Day, as I've always loved animals and I felt like that was a safe enough interest of mine to put out there publicly. Amy, for some strange reason, came up with Candle Burning Day, which absolutely baffled me as a ten year old at the time because my parents would absolutely never had allowed me to burn candles at that age. The winner, though, was Jamie's suggestion, National Smiley Day.
At this point in the late 90s, smiley faces were everywhere. Clothing, stationary, toys...you name it, you could get it with a smiley on it. And I was obsessed with the trend, having several smiley t-shirts, a blue smiley coin purse that I took absolutely everywhere, and several little bean bag plush and bendable smileys. Amy was actually very disappointed about Candle Burning Day not winning, but I was thrilled with the concept of Smiley Day, and honestly thought all the other kids would think it was cool too, because it was such an "of-the-moment" trend.
There were specifics we had to come up with for the holiday, such as the color scheme (yellow, black, and red) and the official song of the holiday (I believe we chose Don't Worry, Be Happy.) And of course, it needed a date. I was chosen to decide, and I completely randomly chose July 6th. I have no idea why; I guess I didn't like being put on the spot and just blurted out the first thing that came to me.
Either way, July 6th was chosen as the date, and National Smiley Day was cemented forevermore....or at least until we presented our projects.
Our teacher actually said that a smiley holiday would probably be better suited to that dead, dreary period of time in winter, and I did feel a little silly for choosing a date so close to a real national holiday, but regardless, since whatever day that was in early 1998, I have never, ever forgotten about National Smiley Day on July 6th. I'm sure Jamie and Amy and the other kids in that class probably don't remember it now, but I always will.
The only other holiday I specifically remember besides ours was a group of boys that came up with Mortal Kombat Day.
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