Last year, in honor of one of the top 1,200 best lines from the cinematic classic Mean Girls, I tweeted on our nation's birthday the following:

For those unfamiliar, there's a line in Mean Girls when the protagonist's voice-over narration says that "Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."

I congratulated myself for my well-placed reference, one which was hardly noticed by my seven or so perpetually-disappointed Twitter followers who have correctly surmised by this point that I still don't really understand how Twitter works.

Then, a few weeks later, it was Pioneer Day/Tami's birthday and I realized that the joke would have been much funnier on Pioneer Day. Never one to let an opportunity to recycle a joke and then beat it to death go by, I went for it.

I legit got an angry message after I tweeted this from someone on Twitter who called me a "hack" (an accusation I don't really understand in this context; can one be a hack for stealing one's own joke?), told me I'm not funny, and also accused me of being stupid for thinking that I would get away with tweeting essentially the same joke twice.

I learned a few things from this experience: (1) people on Twitter can be very angry over really unimportant things; (2) my inability to be funny is seriously hurting other people; and (3) people on Twitter have a refreshingly-wonderful amount of time to address issues they care about.

One thing you may not know about me is that people getting irrationally angry with me about incredibly stupid things on the Internet is like one of my top 5 favorite things about life. There's this one troll that occasionally leaves comments on Stranger about how my stories are made up and how I have no friends. I stopped posting these comments some time ago because CENSORSHIP and because I didn't like that people were picking fights with each other in the comments section of Stranger on innocuous posts when they're supposed to be talking about how much they admire Tami instead. But these comments still come in and they bring me an unreasonable amount of joy. I typically screenshot them and text them out to my group of friends (the ones who aren't real, of course). On occasion they are presented in a series of dramatic readings at gatherings.

The dramatic readings usually turn into a conversation about what kind of person would take the time to read a site they seem to hate, one that blatantly admits to exaggeration, and then leave comments that accuse the writer of exaggeration. FOR YEARS.

All of this is to say, when I received the angry message about my Tweets, I decided that a line had been drawn in the sand. So for the next year:

Labor Day is the one day a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.September 5, 2016


Thanksgiving is the one day a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.November 25, 2016


Christmas is the one day a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.December 25, 2016


New Year's Day is the one day a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.January 1, 2017


Groundhog Day was yesterday. The one day a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.February 3, 2017


Presidents' Day is the one day a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.February 20, 2017


April Fools' Day is the one day a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girl can say anything about it.April 1, 2017


#taxday is the one day a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.April 15, 2017


Easter is the one day a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.April 16, 2017


Father's Day is the one day a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.June 18, 2017

So yeah. I'm the kind of person who is willing to tweet the same joke over and over for a full year just to annoy one person on the Internet.

I wonder where my life would be today if I applied this same dedication to things that matter.

I GUESS WE'LL NEVER KNOW.

~It Just Gets Stranger