Photo by Christopher Miller

Saturday was a gorgeous, picturesque day in Washington. The pollen count might have been a tad high, but that didn’t prevent your associate editor from enjoying the sun and gentle breeze that filled the warm spring air all day on a long bike ride up the Capital Crescent Trail.

But while some of us were relaxing at Fletcher’s Boathouse only two miles but seemingly a world away from the Saturday bustle of Georgetown, several hundred silly folk were on the National Mall and in Dupont Circle, bashing the hell out of each other with pillows.

Yes, it was that thing again: International Pillow Fight Day, that annual celebration of ruining an otherwise useable headrest by dragging it through the dirt and grime of the urban outdoors and using it to assault strangers. Why a pillow fight?

Honestly, who cares? But if it really had to go down, hopefully people were mindful of the health risks. Sure, the organizers of this year’s event might think themselves so righteous for prohibiting feather down pillows as a way of cutting down on litter. BFD. What about all the years of drool, snot and other fluids we deposit on our pillows while we sleep? Guess they just went on the honor system for that.

And then there’s the infantilizing effect of the whole thing. As, John Del Signore, the mothership’s resident curmudgeon said last week: “Pillows are for smothering lazy unwanted children and pretending to be pregnant to get a seat on the train, not for precious public displays of mass infantilization. Grow up and get a job, bums!”

So, for your disgruntlement, here’s nine minutes of people not growing up and probably giving each other all sorts of infectious diseases. We hope some of them got bloody noses, too: