Book of Daze Return-to-Sender Day: How to Reject Life’s Cosmic Junk

Origin Story
The Book of Daze Return-to-Sender Day was created in response to the cosmos’ disturbing habit of hurling unsolicited life events our way. flat tires, bad haircuts, marriages of convenience, your-fault divorce, recalcitrant kids, and an entire decade that would later be known as “the Seventies.”

One day in 1951 a visionary postal clerk named Doris Krimsky in Schenectady, New York, lost her bottle. After receiving her third jury duty summons in a single year, Doris scrawled RETURN TO SENDER across it in lipstick, and mailed it back. Miraculously, she was never called again. Thus was Book of Daze Return-to-Sender Day born, a holiday dedicated to rejecting life’s cosmic mis-deliveries and sending them back whence they came.

The Hall of Records for Return-to-Sender Day
Legend has it that the Hall of Records for Book of Daze Return-to-Sender Day is not a hall but a galactic warehouse orbiting just past Pluto, stuffed with everything humanity has rejected. Inside are millions of unopened wedding invitations, seven hundred million “Dear Justin” letters, three billion pairs of crocs, and an uncountable number of fruitcakes.

Some say that if you press your ear to the night sky on Book of Daze Return-to-Sender Day, you can hear the faint thunk of rejected energy being restocked on the cosmic shelves. Others insist the warehouse is staffed by ghostly postal workers who sort these metaphysical returns while sipping tea brewed from regret.

How to Observe Return-to-Sender Day
Today is the day to audit your existence like an overzealous IRS agent and reject anything that does not spark joy–or at least mild curiosity. Send back unsolicited advice, bad vibes, and the person who cut you off in traffic and then had the nerve to drive exactly the speed limit. Write “RETURN TO SENDER” on your overdue student loan bill, your neighbor’s garage band rehearsal schedule, and the memory of that one time you called your teacher “mom” in fifth grade.

For the truly devout, consider holding a ceremonial “Book of Daze Return-to-Sender Day bonfire.” Bring out all those symbolic items you wish to reject: toxic ex memorabilia, diet books that never worked, inspirational calendars that shamed you every morning, and that one USB cable that never actually fits anything you own. As the flames rise, chant “NOT AT THIS ADDRESS” until your neighbors file a noise complaint.

Some Book of Daze Return-to-Sender Day purists claim that the universe occasionally misfiles human returns. You may wake tomorrow to find your unwanted bad haircut delivered to someone else’s head–or their bad luck delivered back to yours. One priest of the tradition swears he once returned a tax audit only to receive a fully grown alpaca in exchange. “Best trade I ever made,” he told reporters. “I named her Karma.”

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