Avast! These be Strange Waters!

 Aye, and they'd have to be, too; today's tide bring in one of the best holidays ever: International Talk like a Pirate Day! That's right, landlubbers, ye heard it here. It's the one day a year dedicated to the fierce, rogue, sea-loving pirates, when everyone around the world can affect an accent and dress up for school or work (assuming, of course, you've explained yourself to your captain).

I'm pretty bad at Piratey lingo, so I wont even pretend to try to keep it up for long.

We've been following Pirate Day for several years now, and by 'we', of course, I mean my mom and I. My dad and my brothers don't really get into things like this as much as she and I do. My mom teaches a 1st grade class, which is perfect; she dresses up like a pirate and comes in the morning covered in "Arrggs!" and getting the kids excited.

My celebration is a bit more toned down, and 21st century. Last year, when Pirate Day fell on a Sunday, I wore boots to church instead of sandals, and a flower clip in my hair that has a skull in the center (I'm sure I was dressed piratey otherwise as well, but that was a whole year ago; I can't remember that), and this year, I wore the same boots and clip to class. I also change my Facebook picture to something pirate, and adjust the language to English (Pirate).

International Talk like a Pirate Day was started in 1995 by two guys throwing basketballs on their driveway (I envision). You can read the entire account here, on the official Pirate day website, but basically these two guys (and another close friend) decided to start a holiday, and celebrated it amongst themselves for seven years, until in 2002 they contacted national columnist Dave Barry, convincing him to mention the holiday in his column.

The holiday has been growing every year since then, as more and more people discover the wonders of getting together to celebrate and have fun over something and silly and ridiculous as talking like a pirate.

Every time this holiday rolls around, I think about one of my favorite fictional pirates. No, it's probably not who you're thinking of (Unless you happen to be closely related to me, in which case you've probably figured it out). The one I'm thinking about now is named Guybrush Threepwood.

Guybrush Threepwood is the main character in a video game series, the first of which is called The Secret of Monkey Island. The game is modeled to be your average adventure, point-and-click style game, but it's riddled with humor from the very start, and though it's now over twenty years old, it's still one of my favorite games ever.

In the first Monkey Island game, you control Guybrush Threepwood, a young lad who inexplicably shows up on Melee Island with hopes of becoming a pirate. He's sent to the Pirate Captains, who give him a number of trials to complete to prove his worth, and ends up meeting the Ghost Pirate LeChuck, who kidnaps the island's governor and takes her to the mysterious Monkey Island.

Unfortunately, though they managed to make quite a few sequels, the Monkey Island games never really caught on, and relatively few people bothered to buy the fully remastered Special Edition in 2009 (I have my wonderful youngest-older-brother to thank for buying me the special edition, however! I've played the old version several times over, and they couldn't have made the updated version any better!)

This is why I was so excited to hear a Monkey Island reference the first time I heard the official Talk like a Pirate Day song. This shouldn't surprise me - there are a ton of piratey references in this song - but as someone who's never seen anyone outside of her own family mention Monkey Island, it was really fun anyways.

The song was created by Tom Smith, not that I know who that is, for Talk like a Pirate Day in 2003. It's pretty wonderful, so I highly suggest checking it out. The official Pirate Day website also features a song based on a pretty well known piratey joke, which you can watch here.

I love celebrating obscure holidays, though I don't do it as often as I'd like, and Pirate Day is probably the most fun. It hasn't been much, but I hope I've helped turn you on to the spirit of Talk like a Pirate Day! Are you celebrating at all today, and if so, how? I'm always interested to know what other pirates around the world are doing. If it's too late to celebrate this year, make sure to mark your calendar for 2012 (Also, be prepared for December 5th, International Day of the Ninja. It'll sneak up on you!)