On Monday

It goes without saying that the days of the week have their individual, often imputed, characters. I remember the nursery rhyme my Mother would occasionally recite:

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day,
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

This rhyme always seemed to me, anyway, as undoubtedly unfair and perhaps too religiously oriented. Why did Wednesday's child get the (proverbial) shaft? "Full of woe?" Not a way to meet "hump day," eh? And why does the Sunday kid get to be "gay?" I understand this is archaic usage, but still...isn't having a kid on Sunday a violation of the Sabbath work prohibition? Or would that more properly be Saturday?

When I was in college, which seems an increasingly long time ago, the wags and pollywogs that were my friends liked to argue that days of the week were interchangeable, at least in terms of their ability to be drinking days. My senior year the mantra of every tarted-up freshman girl staggering on too-high heels out of (or into) the Purple Pub was "Tuesday is the new Thursday!" From the rhyme, at least, this doesn't make much sense. Far to go is now full of grace? How can Thursday be "far to go" when it is nearly Friday? In any case, Tuesday was the new Thursday and Saturday was the new Sunday and some would even claim that Wednesday was the new Monday, which didn't really make sense either, because how could the week begin twice?

One of the real changes I've had to make in the post-student world is getting used to the kinds of days. In college, there were "weekends" and "monday-wednesday-fridays" and "tuesday-thursdays." That's three kinds of days, and they had different properties. For me, TRs were history/art history/reading type class days, and MWFs were science classes. So that's how my week set up, with Sunday being the real work day, always the goal to get most of the reading for the week done. But then, when I graduated, there were suddenly only 2 kinds of day: "weekends" and "weekdays." And there wasn't much variation in what exactly a "weekday" entailed. Sure, Monday had lab meeting, which was usually painfully early, and Tuesday had the standing Broad meeting, and at least in the Navy Yard the middle weekdays (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) featured free cookies (not so hot for the waistline) and Friday featured free beer at Beer O'Clock (or, for the more sloganeering, at Miller Time.) But, I guess that's not too unusual, for the real world and all...

I close with another nursery rhyme, with which I was not familiar, and I just found, via google searching for "days of the week rhymes."

Monday alone,
Tuesday together,
Wednesday we walk
When i's fine weather,
Thursday we kiss,
Friday we cry,
Saturday's hours
seem almost to fly.
But of all the days in the week, we will call
Sunday the rest day, the best day of all.

I find this, in some ways, a preferable rhyme. For one, it is couched in more amenable terms: that of human relationship. I'm not sure if I fully embrace the ex cathedra folklore of birth-day determinism (not anymore than I support birth-order determinism, but that's another story) and so I rather enjoy the more relaxed progression of days as enjoyed contextually, as a couple. Solitude, togetherness, physical affection, tears, time passing slowly, time passing in communal activity (flaneurship?), a Sunday seen as a day of rest and not as a day of religious obligation: these are something I can relate to, as I grow older, and potentially even wiser in the ways of human relationships.

In any case, Monday's just one of those days. I think you're more likely to have a heart attack, a stroke, a fatal car accident, et cetera on Monday than on other days. That's nice. Monday's also the day with the largest distance to "your time," if indeed you can call the weekend "your time" (or if it isn't raining). But these are well established facts and opinions, and my analysis adds nothing.

I'm not sure what I prefer: Monday alone, or "fair of face." I guess you'd have to be beautiful to be born on Monday, fighting the ol' uphill battle, being born on a day that (kind of) sucks for everyone. But what do I know? For the record, I'm a Wednesday kid. Goes to show you how predictive the rhymist is. Not bloody much!