Dear Monday,
I cannot, in all honesty, call you my favourite day of the week. Can anyone really? You have so many odds stacked up against you, arriving as you do on the heels of Sunday, the very darling of the week’s offspring, with its holiday flavour and lazy demeanour. You come as a cruel shock to the system, announcing your entry with such fervour that it would be well nigh impossible to mistake you for any other day. One has only to sweep a glance around to realise with a sense of impending doom that yes, you have finally arrived! Grumpy drivers on the road, annoyed not just with themselves but with the world at large, driving with a manic fury, as they listen unhappily to music channels that chant coy jokes about “monday blues”. Every household transformed overnight miraculously from the sanctuary of the day before into a chaotic battlefield. Homework is suddenly lost, school uniforms decide to hide in places unseen by the human eye, and tempers fly as everyone scuttles to get out of the house on time. I see you make your smug presence felt, dear depressing Monday, even in the work place, where colleagues walk in with slow measured steps, ready to bite off anyone’s head if they so much as wish them “good morning”. Not a smile to be seen, not a hug to be had….and you dare wonder why you are not everyone’s favourite? Oh, where has my beautiful, placid Sunday gone, filled as it was with good humour, easy banter and sleepy meandering.
There is nothing endearing about you, cruel Monday, for you are relentless in your bid to make us recall our duties and commitments for the remainder of the week. It is inevitably you who reminds us of bills we have forgotten to pay, school permission notes we have forgotten to sign, and phone calls we have forgotten to return. You are a strict taskmaster…tough, daunting, unforgiving…possessing none of the warm tolerance of Tuesday, the vitality of Wednesday, the buoyancy of Thursday or the sheer delight of Friday. The remaining two days do not even bear being spoken about in the same breath as you, so spectacularly supreme are they in their own little world of endless cheer.
However, all said and done, i have always known that in spite of your countless quirks and idiosyncrasies, you are a charmer in your own fashion. If life was full of lazy Sundays, we would never accomplish much. We would wander through this journey on earth in our old flannelette pyjamas, yawning every now and then, humming tunelessly as we let time slip through our fingers, like grains of sand through the hour glass. You implore us to wake up, get dressed and go out there, so that we can leave our footprints in the sand.
If it wasn’t for you dear determined Monday, life would be an endless weekend, and you know what they say about too much of a good thing. So while you may not be top of the popularity charts, you have a special place in my heart because you believe in being cruel to be kind. Like any loving parent, you are not afraid to make tough decisions, knowing fully well that if you don’t, no one else will. You are willing to let your children, those remaining carefree days of the week, enjoy a relatively stress-free existence, while you stubbornly take upon yourself all the brickbats.
You are not the step-child of the week, dearly beloved Monday, you are indeed the parent!!!