Today is Mad Hatter’s Day, the second word to be pronounced Hatta, in the English way if you really want to get into the spirit of it. According to Ari Rapkin, a blogger who posted the following in 1996, the date was chosen from illustrations by John Tenniel in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, wherein the Mad Hatter is always seen wearing a hat bearing a slip of paper with the notation “In this style 10/6”.

He goes on to say that we take this as inspiration to behave like the Mad Hatter on 10/6.  But the real spirit of Mad Hatter Day is turnabout: The nonsense we usually pretend is sane can be called madness for one day in the year; the superficially crazy things that really make sense can be called sane on Mad Hatter Day.

And so it made perfect sense to me those many years ago, when on October 6th, I got married for the first time at eighteen years old.