According to [u]NPR[/u], June is International Accordion Awareness Month. By no strange coincidence, the first week of June is also National Headache Awareness Week. 
I’m sure my accordion-playing friends will waste no opportunities to remind me of this for as long as June shall last. To which I might reply, “Yes, the decree’s a well-considered thing, indeed. We must always be aware of public dangers.” 
And also, no problem is so big that it can’t be ignored.
Nice. 
I just got another scenario:
Boxplayer to me- “June is Accordion Awareness Month, you know.”
Me to everyone- “Accordion alert! Accordion alert! Warning! Warning!”
Wasn’t it cancer awareness just last month?
“Accordion awareness”. Sounds like wishful thinking.
Where’s the fiddle, uilleann pipes or whistle awareness gigs, I ask you? The way things are going, someone’s gonna decree a “Spoons Awareness Month”. I may well decide to hang it all up, then.
Danger, Will Robinson. Danger! 
djm
As a child, I had the misfortune to be traumatized by accordion lessons.
To this day, I utterly detest the smell of them.
Yes, I was thrown out of accordion classes. “This child will never be able to play a musical instrument. She is clearly not musical.”
Beats me how they ever thought I should have been able to play it in the first place–I could hardly drag it in the case, couldn’t put it on unassisted, and staggered beneath the weight. The hideous thing went from my chin to my knees. I couldn’t see over the top of it and when the sides expanded out, my arms were too short to squeeze it back together.
It was my mother’s way of curing me of asking for piano lessons, I think. “I’m not having a piano in the house. An accordion is just like a piano. See, it has a keyboard.”
Accordion Awareness Month! Bah!
And what, pray tell, does an accordian (or any free reed instrument, for that matter) have to do with music? 
djm
I’ve spent most of my life wondering about that.
Its just as I feared: scarred and traumatized since childhood. Where’s Dale when you need him most?
djm
I’m going to Cornwall next week… I am SO not about to agree with you guys. 
That said, “Accordian Awareness”??? Anyone who’s sat in a small session in a confined space will know that everyone is very, very aware of the accordian. That’s as daft as needing a banjo awareness week. Or is this aimed at enlightening the hearing-impaired…?
We can be grateful to it as a cautionary example to us all.
This is my accordion
It sitz upon me knees
It warbles ever sweetily
With every tug and squeeze
It’s all so very nifty with
Its buttons and/or keys
To churn out musicalia
With ergonomic ease.
No holes to seal, no grip to suss
So playing it’s a breeze
It’s made of mother-of-toilet-seat
Instead of tropic trees
No lips to train, no bow to draw
No chanter-reed disease
No worries of humidity
On steppes or on the seas
No rosin, blue-tac, hemp or oil
No corks a-needing greaze
No mamby-pamby tuning slide
To miscalculate or seize
Indomitable, bulletproof
You must all tune to me, please
And we’ll have a little session
While I chirp and grunt and wheeze
I love my dear accordion
It is the dancer’s tease
Prince of all the instruments
Assuring busker’s fees
Dependable of temperament
And portable, too, he’s
A right and ever-sprightly chap
And I’m out of words to rhyme.
(edited for one of those pesky “I before E except after C” exceptions that I’m losing track of in my dotage)
…which is a pity; but “seas/greaze” more than makes up for it. Very fine.
I shall celebrate by going out to the hardware store and purchasing new ear protection devices.
Since it’s International Accordion Awareness Month (did the UN decide on this or something?), let’s not forget the popularity of the beast in China.
China boasts some of the largest accordion orchestras on the planet.
Students at the University of Heidelburg take a break from their studies while smoking opium (c. 1900). I suppose it makes the accordion music even more enjoyable.
djm
Staying in a friend’s house, I picked up an old Larsen cartoon book.
One went as follows:
“Welcome to Heaven: here is your harp.”
“Welcome to Hell: here is your accordian.”
My favourite Larsen musical cartoon is one where there are three or four geeky looking banjo players in a room and the devil is showing a man into the room and saying “here’s your room, Maestro.”
Mandatory accordion content.
In case you don’t recognize her, that’s Betty Boop.