Health & wellness

With Memorial Day coming up, and people taking the opportunity to do things they don’t normally do (navigating holiday traffic, eating cured meat, forgetting to apply SPF 50, firing up a barbecue), it’s time to turn our attention to the noblest of professions: nursing.

Nurses are there for you in times like these. They don’t judge questionable behavior, but instead provide care and comfort, even if it’s the result of a mistimed water ski jump.

Here at SuperOptimist headquarters, we don’t spend a lot of time looking at calendars or clocks, being that we’re busy making the most of every moment. So imagine our surprise when we discovered that National Nurses Week had already come and gone!

It turns out that this celebration of caregivers begins each year on May 6th and ends on May 12^th — Florence Nightingale’s birthday. That’s nice and all, but it’s during national holidays that nurses should really be honored. At this point, we remembered another tenant of SuperOptimist practice: celebrate whatever you want, whenever you want.

So we hereby extend National Nurses Week for another 72 hours, and encourage you to recognize and appreciate the nurses in your life. Not just the hospital variety, who will be working overtime due to the human need to pack in the most fun over a three-day weekend, but the mother who fusses over every sniffle and scrape, the neighbor who rushes over with a bandage after you slip with the electric hedge trimmer, the son or daughter who administers to the visiting parent as if they were about to expire, or the concerned friend who hasn’t heard from you in 24 hours and calls repeatedly to make sure you’re still ambulatory.

As for a gift? You can always send a fruit basket. But we recommend getting a large tattoo of your favorite nurse on a forearm or neck to show your unwavering devotion. Remember: nurses work hard, and they have to stand all day in ugly shoes. They deserve more than a thank-you card. Let the celebration continue!

Some consider a public yawn to be a sign of ill-breeding, poor manners, and worst of all, an inability to control oneself. Nonsense! Your yawn is actually a sign that you are deep thinker, a hard worker, and, dare we say it, a leader in your field. Here’s why:

Scientists at Princeton University postulate that yawning plays a vital role in your well-being by cooling your brain. When you start to yawn, the stretching of the jaw increases blood flow to your cranium, while in turn forcing downward flow of spinal fluid. Air breathed into the mouth during the yawn chills these fluids, like a car’s radiator cooling the engine.

So the next time you feel a yawn coming on, don’t stifle it. Don’t hide it behind a hand or elbow. Let your yawn announce itself, jaws agape, eyed clenched shut. Whatever sound that arises within the cave-like expanse of your mouth set asunder, let it echo as if it were a note ringing out from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

End your yawn with a satisfying sigh and a smack of the lips. Should anyone ask why you’re taking so much pleasure in the act, explain to them the science behind the activity. Of course you’re yawning! You’re simply cooling your brain off, since yours has been working overtime. Suggest to them that they’re not yawning because they don’t have as many world-changing ideas as you. Watch as they suddenly start following your lead and yawning like crazy.

You are a leader! A leader of yawns! Now isn’t that satisfying?

National Nurses Week continues!

Yawn like a leader!