N.M.I.A.D/(O).
2003-on
A few years back, Mark confided that his birthday was never celebrated during the school year, since he was born in August. Much to his chagrin, this was immediately interpreted as the impetus for a new national holiday, to be celebrated exactly one month after Mark’s actual birthday.
Each year, on or around September 2, I plaster the walls of LHS with Mark Isero propaganda posters, and barge into classrooms to ask students if they realize that it’s National Mark Isero Appreciation Day/Observed (aka NMIAD/O). Their reaction is generally befuddlement, delight, and/or annoyance. Which is fine: it’s not really about them. And, to degrees, it’s not entirely about Mark, either: it’s evolved into a very surreal early-in-the-school-year excuse for LHS faculty, past and present, to get together and share in some revelry. We are all Mark Isero.