MOULTRIE — During the first week of January, many people are busy marking up their calendars for upcoming events. And it’s generally about the second week before most of us have gotten comfortable with writing the correct dates when we make out a check. That transition is not rocket science but apparently it does require enough skills that we could work in a firecracker plant.

Anyways, I was writing stuff on my calendar for the first quarter and to make sure that I wasn’t leaving something out, I consulted Google.

So this Sunday, Jan. 6, is National Bean Day. Sunday is also the first day of the NFL wild card playoffs. It’s quite possible that Bean Day and football could intertwine with socially redeeming value. I give you “bean dip.”

I really had no idea how to celebrate National Bean Day so The National Institute for Investing in Bean Futures gave me some tips. Here are five of them:

• Share bean recipes with a friend.

I would rather go fishing with a friend or watch a football game with a friend, but I guess in the lapse moments we could discuss which beans are best in chili and soup.

• Read Jack and the Beanstalk to your children.

Well, that horse has long left the barn for me. And besides, that fairy tale left out key elements. The author never told us what kind of beans that plant produced or who had to pick them.

• Plant a bean in your garden.

In January? So who researched this little project? I don’t want to plant a bean. If I do I will have flashbacks. My dad used to plant the longest butter bean rows in Grady County. And they always curved around the corn field so that when you started picking, you couldn’t see the other end of the rows.  It was depressing. But it did help condition me to pursue some things in life that initially seemed a bit out of my reach. And it taught me about putting life into perspective ... that there is something worse than listening to a State of the Union Address.

• Devise your own bean-based meal

• Eat a bean-based meal

Now who would have thought that one would design such a meal and then possibly debate whether or not to eat it? I would pose that these two suggestions are a tandem of cause and effect. Let me draw an analogy on cause and effect: Install term limits for congressmen and expect better government. Oops! I’m back to that Jack and the Beanstalk thing ... fairy tales, I mean.

Oh well, if National Bean Day doesn’t appeal to you, Jan. 26, beginning at 11:30 a.m. and running through 12:30 p.m. on Jan. 27 is National Potato Day.

Notice that this event is timed down to the minute. I don’t know why. It may have involved the Mayans.

 But I have a question, does this day include sweet potatoes or are we just talking about Irish potatoes? And if you were in Ireland shopping at the grocery, would you ask for Irish potatoes or just potatoes?

And on March 18 we have Bacon Connoisseurs Week. The bacon lobby tells us there is good and bad bacon and there is literature available for us to tell the difference. The other day my favorite breakfast restaurant was closed so I went to an alternate site. The bacon was so thin I could read a newspaper through it. Of course I would look silly doing that so I didn’t.

 But then I got to thinking, maybe this was “bacon helper.”

Oh well, none of these events will have parades or days off from work. Won’t be any bands playing. And I doubt seriously anybody will be reading Jack and the Bean Stalk. I couldn’t safely say that if George W. Bush was still president.

(E-mail: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)