You may or (if you are televisionless) may not be aware of the recent South Park episode featuring Kick A Ginger Day, the November 20th holiday on which it is traditional to kick redheads.

You may or may not also be aware that the heretofore entirely imaginary Kick A Ginger Day fell during International Bullying Awareness Week, but that is neither here nor there.

And you are, since you’re on this blog, likely all-too-aware that children have an irrepressible desire to act out the things they see on television.

You can see this coming, can’t you?

From Canada.com, in advance of the day:

RCMP in B.C. are investigating the 14-year-old administrator of a Facebook group called “National Kick a Ginger Day, are you going to do it?”

The Vancouver Island boy said the group, which had nearly 5,000 members from across Canada and internationally, was only a joke and he is sorry.

The page, which urges members to “get them steel toes ready,” had garnered hundreds of messages. Many were from people claiming to have already kicked redheads that day; others expressed outrage.

And from the CBC, afterwards:

Twenty students from Journey Middle School in Sooke, B.C., were sent home for kicking their redheaded classmates; a student in Prince George, B.C., went home from school after being kicked in the leg repeatedly; and 13 students in Calgary were suspended for beating up a redheaded teen.

But, in the fine heroic tradition of the Pink Shirts, there is hope. It comes from teacher Tulani Ackerman, whose younger brother was one of those unfortunately-pigmented victims. On November 27th, this coming Thursday, she and her entire class will take the Ginger plunge and turn redhead.

Ms. Ackerman and her class are to be congratulated for setting an heroic example of self-sacrifice and solidarity and I only hope to god they don’t start wearing pink shirts with that artificially red hair.

Previously, I wanted to know your preferred setting in which to deliver your child, and fifty-four percent answered that they wanted to have a doctor. The next highest was a birthing center with a midwife, and eleven percent wanted at at-home birth with a midwife.

I have to say I am torn. I do think that women should have as many choices as possible, but when I think of how common it used to be for women to die during childbirth, I lean towards a doctor. Births that are expected to go smoothly can develop problems, and that makes me nervous. I know more than one woman, as also evidenced by many of the comments, who expected to have no issues and yet the situation turned critical and a doctor was necessary. I had no choice, since I had a high-risk pregnancy, but I’m pretty sure I would have chosen a doctor.

As for this week, it’s Thanksgiving week for us here in the US.