It was spring of my first year in college. I walked into the Math Lab, where I worked, and the administrative assistant looked at me and declared, “March forth!”
“What?”
“It’s the only date on the calendar that is also a command,” she said. “March forth!”
Puns have never really been my thing. I find some of them cute—occasionally even clever—but I almost never think of them on my own. So the joke had never occurred to me. She was flabbergasted that I’d never heard the pun before.
That “March forth!” is an imperative was moderately amusing. I tried in subsequent years to think of something to do with it. Because just pointing out that the day sounds like a command lacks something. And truth be told, about half the time I don’t remember the joke at all until March fifth, by which time it’s too late.
I don’t remember anyone that I ever told the pun too having ever heard it before I mentioned it.
A few years ago, at my previous employer, I wound up on a committee charged with setting up some parties and other fun activities to prop up morale in the work place. Right after someone suggested some activity involving people wearing the shirts of their favorite football team, another co-worker suggested Combat Boot Day. None of us knew what it was.
“When I was in college there was this other girl in my dorm who got us all to wear boots—like Doc Martins or something that could pass for combat boots—on March the fourth. Because it’s March Forth Day. And you March in groups to classes together. And at the end of the day we had a party back in the dorm.”
I had to tell about the admin assistant at my college job who had first told me the March Forth pun and had acted surprised when I didn’t know about the day. But she also hadn’t told me anything to actually do to observe it.
The co-worker said her dorm-mate said it had been an annual thing at her high school. “It was weird, but kind of fun to march around and have people be confused. But now that I say it, I don’t know how we make that an office activity.”
Then I read this rather heartbreaking article: Trauma Sets Female Veterans Adrift Back Home. And I thought, “Okay, here’s something I can do.”
So, this March Forth, I would like to urge everyone to go donate to The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.
March forth, and spread the word.
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