Mark-Paul Gosselaar Day

Mark-Paul Gosselaar Day

John Paul Derryberry

What's Mark-Paul Gosselaar day, you ask? It's on March 1st. What's March 1st? The famed actor Mark-Paul Gosselaar's birthday, who made his mark by playing Zach Morris on Saved by the Bell in my formative years. Why is MPG Day not a national holiday? I have no idea, but somebody is screwing up big time! To seriously answer your inquiry into an inside joke between my friends and me, we have to travel back ten years. 

A best friend and I work opposite schedules, so our actually hanging-out time was at an all-time low.  When he discovered, due to a scheduling glitch, that he had a random Monday off and I always had Mondays off, I jokingly said it must be some national holiday for us to have the same day off. We googled, and it was not, but we found out it was Mark's B-day, so Mark-Paul Gosselaar Day was born. 

We made plans for breakfast, and it happened to be a March 1st, where the temperature climbed to 55 degrees by mid-day. SO a cookout and fire were ordered up to celebrate MPG-day. My friend even joked with the teller at the bank, while running an errand, by stating, "Surprised, you guys are open on Mark-Paul Gosselaar day" She looked puzzled. We laughed and went on our merry way. A tradition was born, and today is the tenth MPG-Day. 

Why bring up an inside joke on a blog when inside jokes are only funny amongst your friends-- because of imagination and how we lose it as we age. Turning a random day off into a more significant event for laughs, take the willingness to look stupid to others. Imagination is the center of willing to look silly in front of others. Come up with some hair brained scheme with fake characters, a fake holiday, or a phony business, and almost every adult in the world will tell you it shouldn't be done. Before we landed on the moon, someone had to have the audacity to imagine it could be done. Before we flocked to see every comic book movie made, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and others dreamed up characters with powers, weaknesses, ambition. They decided the combo of visual pictures and written words would capture the audience. 

At some age, many of us are told to stop dreaming and focus. That's when we begin to struggle with much because suddenly, the world is limited, finite, and often too small. There is no set age that imagination dies in the human species. We are free to continue to make up stuff that might one day be something. It pushes back on depression and other mental health symptoms because a healthy brain dreams big. Minds think of all sorts of cool things before they become a reality. They're called concepts. 

So yes, use the "adult" terms for imagination as you want: concept, idea, thoughts. Always remember it is really playing pretend, and that a sign of intelligence in kids is playing pretend. So play-act once in a while, think of something the world could use, create the next great movie villain and watch yourself and those around you becoming healthier. We feed off others' positive vibes, and when is the last time you saw someone  being sad while day-dreaming. 

So our made-up holiday made it to year ten. My friend texted me, "happy MPG-day". We re-lived the bank teller's reaction on the original MPG-Day. My friend said we should get t-shirts made for MPG-day. I replied, "I always imagined Mark-Paul Gosselaar Day was a non-commercial holiday." Ten years later and we still imagine ideas for our fake holiday!  It reminded me to remember to tell all of you, the best things in life come when we dare to imagine we can.