Holy Obligation, Batman!

The sucky thing about being born on November 1st in a Catholic (okay, at least my mom is) household is that November 1st is All Saints' Day, which is a "holy day of obligation", otherwise known as a "let's make Theresa be bored in church every year on her birthday, ha ha ha" day.

It would have been much better had I been born on November 2nd because a) yeah, not a "holy crap you're obligated to park your butt in church" day, and b) it would coincide with the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration. Sure, I'm not from Mexico, but still... If I can't pick and choose what cultural traditions to rip off, what kind of American would I be?

I was thinking about this today as I walked by Jim's Store since still he has a bunch of small ceramic skull figurines in the window display. (Okay, so it's been a week since Day of the Dead, but who's counting?)

I like the idea of going to a graveyard to say hello to the dead. But then I started thinking about how this would work in my own life, and I ran into trouble.

First off, I have absolutely no idea where any of my relatives are buried. I could narrow it down to the state, but after that I'd have to just start guessing.

So I'd have to pick somebody else's relatives to say hello to, which is okay, but then I started thinking -- I don't know these people, what if I don't even like them? I mean, the chances of that are pretty good, because there are a lot of people I don't like. And they aren't even, you know, dead.

And a lot of dead people are really old, or at least they were before they died. They'd probably want to talk about all their medical problems. Who wants to hear a bunch of old people talking about their ailments? The only reason to listen to other people blab about their ill health is so you can talk about your own much more fascinating problems. Let's face it, it would be hard to one-up the dead people when talking about medical problems because they died from whatever was wrong with them. It's like a freaking coup-fourré.

So ultimately I've decided to just keep my birthday where it is and just un-obligate myself. I think it will just work out better this way.