National FUT Day

Recently I did a glowing write-up on a phenomenon called National Pi Day.  My focus was the mathematical details of Pi,  and Pi Day’s potential as the most celebrated day in the month of March.

I made reference to a community of “Numberheads”  or  “Math Geeks”,  implying that they’ve done an effective job in promoting their Day. 

But I suspect that – in the beginning – the whole thing was the idea of one inspired person.  I haven’t researched it yet,  but hopefully I’ll locate this person.  And it’ll be my honor to interview this person and feature him / her on these pages.

As it happens,  a long time ago I knew such an inspired person.  At the tender age of 13 he made a noble effort at creating a new National Day.

His name was Barry Fitzsimmons, one of the more rebellious types in the Freshman class at Bishop Reilly High School.  He had an axe to grind with just about everybody and everything,  a 1964 Rebel Without a Cause. 

One of his peeves was being cooped up in Room 207 with the same dorky Catholic kids all day long. He'd already had enough of this in Catholic grade school,  and he thought High School would entail the more “grown-up” freedom and variety of moving around from room to room, class to class,  in the course of the day.

Not so for the Freshmen at Reilly High.  The powers-that-be divided the new students into groups of 30,  according to some mysterious scholastic criteria.  Each group had the same subjects (most of which Barry hated) with the same teachers (most of which Barry also hated).   Every hour a new teacher would turn up in the same old room (which Barry also hated). 

One day Barry walked into Room 207 at 8:30 AM,  which was way earlier than normal for him.  He had a big paper bag full of neckties,  which he’d apparently found somewhere in his attic.  Each tie – in the style of some awful bygone era of Americana,  was very wide and ridiculously gaudy,  with yellows and oranges and reds splashed shamelessly on backgrounds of green and brown.  In an early 60s era of skinny ties,  these monstrosities deserved the name “FUT”.

 “FUT” was an acronym for “Fat Ugly Tie”

Barry got to work feverishly, pretty much ordering everybody to wear one of the ties.   He said it was National FUT Day,  and his enthusiasm was contagious.

I went along with it easily,  taking off my regular tie and putting on my FUT.  The dress code at Reilly was jacket and tie (which Barry hated of course),  so switching to FUT mode was easy. 

Everybody was FUTted  by the time the English teacher walked in at 9:00.   It took a minute or two for him to lose his focus on the day’s lesson,  suddenly beholding a sea of FUTs and 30 grinning faces.  He took it in stride,  smiled a lot during the lesson,  perhaps had his best laugh of the week.

The algebra teacher was rather dour,  rolled his eyes at the FUTs,  called it idiotic and went on with the equations of the day.  One by one the teachers came in, with varied reactions to the new National Holiday.  

Barry had his day in the sun,  responsible for a day's worth of good clean fun.   He collected the FUTs after the last class, and they were never seen again.

To no one’s surprise, Barry opted not to continue his education at Reilly High, disappearing after Freshman Year.  I thought it would have been pretty funny if he returned  the next year, on the anniversary of the first National FUT day,  with enough FUTs for the entire student body. 

But it wasn’t meant to be,  and the idea obviously never caught on.  It was nonetheless a triumph for a 13-year old kid with a ton of angst and a funny idea.  As Barry said at the time – “No Ifs or Buts,  Today we wear FUTs.”