It almost slipped past me. October is National Popcorn Month.

OK, I’m being facetious. Actually, I didn’t know there was one. But not only is there a Popcorn Month, there’s also a National Popcorn Board.

Of course, if you do a little research, you will find that there are special declarations celebrating or recognizing a broad array of foods, sports, illnesses, causes, pets, etc.

For the most part, unless someone is obsessed with a thing or issue, these notifications go by unnoticed. In other words, they won’t be on your calendar you get from your insurance company. No parades, no mayor proclamations and no days off work are linked to these “special days.”

I think I may have taken popcorn for granted all these years. I probably had my first bag of commercially prepared popcorn while watching a Johnny Mack Brown western at the old Grady Theater in Cairo. It was a nickel a bag. You can still get a nickel bag of popcorn, but it will cost you a buck fifty.

Not until recently have I ever thought about taking a particular food for granted. But that very thing happened to me during cancer treatment. For a year, I could not have a salad. The chemotherapy I was given killed my bone marrow, and I had no immunity whatsoever. The doctors said there was too much of a chance of picking up a bacteria that could be fatal if I ate salads. I did not argue.

So during some 20 days of isolation I had time to think about a lot of things. And one of them was salad.

I have enjoyed salads all my life and never had I thought about what kind of world I would live in if salads didn’t exist. During that year, I truly craved a crispy salad.

On the day that the year of prohibition was up, my wife and I went out to dine, and all I ordered was a salad. It was a large salad — lettuce, onions, carrots, green olives, black olives, cheese, cucumbers, hot peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, bacon bits, bell peppers, etc. It was a veritable cornucopia of vegetable production on a plate the size of small jon boat.

Did you know that lettuce actually has no significant nutritional value? But God gave it to us because

He knew that one day someone would invent blue cheese dressing. And yes, my jon boat full of vegetables looked like it had melting snow on it. It made my toes curl.

So having been informed of National Popcorn Month, I noted that there certainly should be a National Salad Month. Well, lo and behold, there is one. I Googled it. May is National Salad Month. I would have voted for March because that’s when my prohibition ended, and I overdosed on a small garden. But May will do. It’s only two months off that mark. 

I don’t really know how these special days get proclaimed. I know that they are meant to make us more aware of causes, products and events. I don’t know if they come from an edict of someone in power or if they get voted on. Perhaps there are people who sit around a large mahogany table eating “loaded potatoes” and suddenly in unison they declare that September is National Potato Month. And it is.

By the way, I’m writing this as National Newspaper Week comes to a close.

This special week was first proclaimed 73 years ago to celebrate and uplift the concept of and Constitutional provision for a free press. 

So just having experienced the absence and impact of something as simple as a salad for a period of time, I wonder how one would feel without a newspaper for a year? Oh the things we may take for granted!

Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer, 985-4545. Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com