‘Forget Your Worries Day’ Has Sponsors Fretting Over March 19
New York (UP)—Three fellows with furrowed brows have just set themselves up as the National Forget Your Worries Day Committee.
They couldn’t have picked a better year to start setting aside a special day to dispel cares.
Only trouble is, the committee is worried.
March 19 is to be National Forget Your Worries Day. That date was picked, explained Committee Publicist Lester Rand, because they wanted the day to follow closely income-tax payment deadline March 15.
John L. Goldwater and Louis H. Silberkleit, co-chairman of the committee who also head a comic book publishing company, promised to put together a list of suggestions on how to go about forgetting worries.
Light But Practical
That’s what’s worrying them right now.
“We want to treat the worry do’s and don’ts in a light but practical fashion,” explained Silberkleit, who is credited with originating the whole idea. “We feel that 60 percent of worrying is due to the way people act toward each other—little irritations and thoughtlessness. So we want our list to take care of the small things. We don’t attack major causes of worry like illness, which no one can do anything about.”
Both Silberkleit and Goldwater are considered by their associates to be easy going, humorous men. In their own experience, they say, they have found you can’t stop worrying overnight. So the only suggestion they’re sure will be on their list is to prepare early for Forget Your Worries Day.
Considering this, it seemed the men should have set aside a week, instead of just one day. Especially since there are weeks set aside for pickles, dogs and other things.
“The idea did occur to us,” Goldwater said. “But we thought people would start worrying about having to try and forget their worries for a whole week. If we can make a success of 24 hours this year, maybe we can increase it a day at a time until we get up to a week.”
Goldwater emphasized that the committee had a serious purpose behind all this, “even though we’re handling it jocularly.”
“We had a letter from a boy in Korea who had read one of our comic books,” he said. “He said he’d gotten a good laugh out of it, and he started thinking that maybe if people would learn to laugh more he wouldn’t be in that foxhole. So we got to thinking that people are worrying so much about war they forget to think about peace.”
That started Forget Your Worries Day. Now if the committee can just come up with a list of suggestions on not worrying about little things—next year they hope to work up to things like world peace.
(Next post on Monday: Inspiration: The Peacock)
Goldwater are considered by their associates to be easy going, humorous men. they call Comics are not bad.
ReplyDeleteI was going to question the income tax payment date, but I see the filing deadline for individual tax returns changed from March 15 to April 15 in 1954.
ReplyDeleteSo are we going to celebrate ‘Forget Your Worries Day’ on April 19 this year? Or, judging by the news, maybe the Spring Break crowd in Florida is already celebrating.