As the skies darken and the car starts making weird noises

Yes, it’s coming – on Sunday, to be precise. National Grouch Day rears its ugly head on October 15th, the one day of the year some sonofabitch isn’t allowed to rain on our raining on parades. But they will anyway, because if there’s one thing bright, optimistic people cannot do is put a cork in it.

I doubt you’ve noticed, but nobody seems to even try to recognize our own special holiday. Did you get a cake that someone ‘accidentally’ dropped on the floor last year? I know I didn’t. I tried stealing someone’s office chair for the day and I got reprimanded for it. The one time that I came closest to seeing someone try to get into the spirit was when I complained about being marginalized as the most unrecognized and discriminated-against class of people in the country, and I was told ‘grouch’ wasn’t either a racial or ethnic distinction. I was nicely annoyed with them for a while, until I realized they probably hadn’t done it intentionally.

In years past, I provided numerous helpful tips to foster the proper mindset for the day, but as far as I can tell, nobody bothered with them in the slightest – figures. This year I’m going to pass, mostly because I’m too irritated at the various things that have happened recently* to put the effort into it. Oh, maybe I’ll be back in a day or so to contribute, if I’m nice.**

But until that happens, you’re on your own. You’ll probably screw it up anyway, give up being grouchy about halfway through the day when someone smiles at you or something meaningless and superficial like that. We dedicated grouches have no use for such fair-weather fiends, and if you really had it going on, you wouldn’t need my assistance – you could crank out the crankiness without batting an eye, and could spread it to everyone you contact too. So you’re on your own.

* This is perfectly true
** Fat chance
*** This is also perfectly true: When I mentioned the upcoming holiday to Jim of the infamous Daily-And-Not Jim Pics, he said, “When is that, Sunday? I could go to church!” At least he gets the idea…