Ah… this story would have been so cool if it were true.

The Snopes debunked prank claimed that for “five minutes on January 4th”, we’d all experience partial weightlessness because of “planetary alignment”. The idea was that the phenomenon would ensue due to the combined gravitational forces of “Pluto moving behind Jupiter”. Aside from the fact that Pluto’s not a planet, so we don’t get to say it’s part of a planetary alignment, something else was kinda eyebrow raise-y: the claim that if you jumped in the air, it’d take you three seconds to fall back to earth. That didn’t sound exciting, but I’m also bad at math, so I took out my calculator and figured that that’s 15 times the usual amount of time it takes to fall. If this was real, we needed to alert the news. Ask Obama to declare another national holiday. Cuatro de Fly-o, we can call it!

Alas, it was bullshit.

Still, in the spirit of some other upcoming holidays also based on myths, let’s pretend we believe this is coming. And discuss what we could have done if Cuatro de Fly-o had happened. Who knows? Maybe it’ll happen f’real in the future. And you’ll wanna be ready.

Here we go. My spoof article to their spoof article.

4 things you can do if partial weightlessness day ever actually happens:

1. WEDDING JUMP

So what if your wedding’s not till spring? Dress up and do that one 80’s style (silly yet for some reason mandatory) jump bit for photos on Cuatro. And everyone will think Tinkerbell spiked the champagne (“That dude in the wheelchair got UPS, man!”)

(Plus, your fat friends can partake.)

2. SUPERHERO LANDING

It’s so fckking elegant the way descending comic book superheroes plant their landings.

Even the hard landings look like Olympic ice dancing. And much like ice dancing, it’s harder than it looks. For me, even landing out of bed in the morning is accompanied by a groaning soundtrack not unlike an orchestra awkwardly tuning up. Not on cuatro! Get you a cape, some fancy recording equipment, and then after you Youtube it, everyone will be sending out bat signals with your face across the sky.

3. FLYING DOG

Every dog I’ve ever owned goes apeshit at the slightest hint of seismic activity.

On cuatro, we get to experiment with how they respond to weightlessness as well. No, I’m not saying to throw your dog. I’m saying to invite him along for the previous experiment as your underweight Underdog sidekick – and enjoy the look of WTFery on his face when you play it back later.

4. LIE ABOUT LBS TO YOURSELF

If you’re among the majority of my social media feed, feeding on disgusting, saccharine food has already begun.

And you don’t intend to end it till after the 1st. By then, you won’t even have blood anymore. It’ll just just be running with Bailey’s, wine, and clumps of sugar and salt as the bathroom scale starts taking on life and occasionally snapping at you like the fridge from Requiem for a Dream. My advice? Lie to yourself – but with a purpose. Step on the scale, snap a photo of “what you weigh”, and use that as motivation to keep those resolutions you still haven’t made. It’s always easier to keep going than it is to start. So if you can convince yourself that you’re already making progress as shown by your reduced weight, you’ll feel inspired to just pick up where left off before holiday torpor set it.

(#protip: don’t weigh yourself again till like, a month. Or three.)

5. CHRISTMAS TREE REMOVAL

So, this is it.

After this, beautiful, ethereal, weightless moment – the holidays are finally gonna be over. And then it will be time to take down your tree. If none’a the above ideas appeal to you and seem tedious, why not use this big moment to do something super productive? Like dismantle and remove that tree you’re officially not going to need after today? The allure here is how much easier it’s gonna be than usual – when you jump up to grab the tree topper, you’ll have an eternity longer up there than usual to fiddle with freeing it up. Or, instead of that, you could spend your moment imbued with the same Schwarzenegger strength a mom pulling a car off her kid has – except without all the adrenaline and vein popping – and use your powers to quickly drag your not-so-heavy tree across the room and out the window without breaking your back.

Okay, back to reality.

You know, they did this prank back in the 70’s too. Back then, people jumped up, called into radio stations and said, “I felt it! I felt it!”. The problem with now is that internet’s more popular than radio and we’ve got a Warholian fame culture on it. Folks sell their health and soul alike for fifteen minutes of fame. And they’re lucky if they get even fifteen seconds. A consolation they’ll take with a hockey player’s smile.

Thus, you may not be looking forward to the fourth anymore.

But you can look forward to footage of folks falling to their deaths after falling for this.

Which arguably may be even better celebratory entertainment: “Documented Darwin Awards Day”.