Being retired means I usually don’t know what day of the week it is. For those of you who are now working at home, you’re probably getting a little taste of this too. Serving on the Library board does help keep me on track though. Once a month we have our board meetings on a Monday and our Book Club on a Tuesday. So, at least I have to know when those days roll around.
When I first retired, I went grocery shopping on a Saturday. It must’ve been out of habit because why else would I do that? Habits do die hard. When you’re at work, you always know what day it is because, well, everybody’s working for the weekend! That would’ve made a great song by the way. I used to have different ways of referring to the days of the work week. Tuesday was known as “Monday’s Evil Twin” and Thursday was commonly referred to as “Day 4 of the Hostage Situation”.
Then I came up with an idea for Sunday (much to my children’s dismay). I called it “Never on Sunday”. It started because I noticed how many times we use a negative expression in conversation – when it’s not needed. For example, instead of saying, “It’s nice out today” – you might hear, “Isn’t it nice out today?” It seems like the same thing but is the word “not”, even as a contraction, really necessary? I started to think that using “not” so often in conversation could be forming our thoughts in a negative way. So – “Never on Sunday” began as a game (on Sundays of course) when we had to rephrase our sentences, avoiding “not” or any contraction of it. When we might say, “Aren’t you ready to go yet?” We would have to come up with an alternative like, “When will you be ready to go?” My family members were good sports and went along with it but, I’ll tell you what – it was hard!
So, try it sometime – go for a day or even an hour without using “not” - or any contraction of not - and you’ll probably agree – it ain’t easy!
Oops.