October 6 is National Noodle Day.

Did anyone ever tell you to use your noodle? OriginTrail.com says that “Use your noodle” was originally an insult: “The phrase likened the body language of a simpleton wagging his head around while pondering some basic concept, in a way similar to a dangling, wet noodle.”

But I intend no offense when I say: Use your noodle, and find a clever way to celebrate National Noodle Day!

Has there ever been such a versatile food? Noodles come in all different shapes and sizes. You can serve them with cheese, tomato sauce, pesto, peanut sauce, or soy sauce. You can boil them, stir-fry them, bake them into a noodle kugel, or prepare them in countless other ways. You can eat them with chopsticks or a fork—or, like the kids in the commercial below, you can use a spoon to eat them in soup.

Those kids sure seem to love the little round soup noodles. Watch as a mother calls out with a queer-sounding noodle yodel—“Noo-noo-noodle O’s!”—and all the neighborhood children come running like she is the Pied Piper of soup. I actually find it kind of disturbing. Let’s leave yodeling to goatherds, shall we?

“O ladle those Noodle O’s!”

Campbell’s Noodle O’s soup commercial (1970s)