Have I ever asked you for anything? Seriously, have I ever, one single time, asked you for something? Actually, if you happened to have read collegehumor on the third Thursday in April any of the last three years and seen our articles about the fake holiday National High Five Day, don't answer that question. If you're that guy, then I'll admit, I've probably been a little overly demanding of you. But if you read collegehumor that frequently, then you're not the one I'm talking to right now. Because that means that you're probably the guy who actually gets out on the weekends, the guy who is sinking five in a row on the beer pong table, the guy who has sex with the girlfriend of the president of some other fraternity, emails naked pictures of her to CH, then high fives her douchebag boyfriend on your way out the door. And you've probably heard all about National High Five Day and have participated for years. No this year is a different kind of National High Five Day. Because this year, I'm talking to your buddy.

You know the guy I mean, in fact, he's one of your boys. He's a good guy, but he hasn't left your couch, to go to class or to go out, since the beginning of the semester. He has boxes and boxes of Cinnastix laying around him. He is on level 500-something of Halo. And when you are kicking some girl out of your bed at 6 o'clock in the morning, he is always still up from the night before, bong in between his legs, watching the Cartoon Network with the volume turned down, Wu-Tang turned up, and is freaking out about how much everything "lines up." This year, our little holiday is coming right for your boy. This year, the third Thursday in April just happens to be 4/20, and we are putting the high right back in National High Five Day.

We didn't plan it this way, but we'll be goddamned if we're going to let it slip through our fingers. So for your stoner buddy who doesn't know, here's the rundown. National High Five Day is a holiday that was invented five years ago by a group of kids who were some combination of the first guy and the second guy in college. It was invented on a drunken night at a bar, so no one can exactly remember who invented it, but the next day we could all remember that it existed. The holiday consists of giving as many high fives to strangers as possible, but we would eventually like to build it to the point where everyone gets the day off from class and work for no real reason. Like Channukah. It is a dream based on determination, creativity, the high five, and the belief that you can build one small idea into something very, very big so long as that idea is completely pointless.

Because at the end of the day, NHFD is about building and looking to the future. And I mean way in the future. Picture a day so far from now that myspace.com is where people our age go to announce their retirement. A day when our nation's biggest metropolis has been around so long, it's just known as York, York, and a day that the most groundbreaking male pop sensation in history cuts its back to just "Kids On The Block." By the way, visit our myspace page at Myspace/NationalHighFiveDay. We're kind of too old to really get the point of myspace, but add us on as your friend and we promise not to send you any naked pictures of our dongs or even remind you when our birthday is coming up. But anyway, when that day finally comes, no matter how long it takes, we hope to have really done something to legitimately help you. We here at NHFD have a dream that one day, you can tidy up your desk at the office every year on the third Wednesday in April, put up your auto-reply on your email, and plan on spending the entire next day lounging at the pool, sipping some boozy drinks and watching your kids push each other off the high dive while you throw high fives to every fellow lounger and passerby. It will be great. I really think it can happen. And if that doesn't sound like some high talk, I don't know what does.
NationalHighFiveDay. April 20th, 2006.