Rainy Days And Mondays

Tell me why I don’t like Mondays, I want to shoot the whole world down…

On January 29^th, 1979, Brenda Ann Spencer took a gun in her 16 year old hands and went for a spree at the Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California.  Two adults were killed, eight children and one police officer were injured.  When asked why she would do such an unspeakable thing, her answer was simple:  “I don’t like Mondays.  This livens up the day.”

Never being the kind to work a typical schedule, Mondays have had little meaning to me.  It was a day like any other, and days are rarely kind to me.  Seems everything interesting ever happens after the sun has been put to rest. 

For the last ten years, Mondays have been a day to sleep.  Weekends were consumed by a racetrack where my family gets their dirt on by driving circles in the mud, and I was documenting all of it for the world to see.  Sunday was clean up day – Monday often came and went without even being noticed. 

Ever since I hit the top of the hill last summer, my priorities are changing.  Forty years have come and gone, one year blurring in to the next like a never-ending snow storm.  . 

Lately I’ve had reason to like Mondays.  They seem to bring good things; smiles, flights of fancy, and healing rains.  At the same time, I feel like Brenda Ann Spencer – like something drastic is needed to liven things up.  Someone said recently that weekends are good, a time to step back.  This is a foreign concept to me – me being the bull in my own china mind.  Stepping back isn’t a talent I possess; move forward, all the time. 

A funny thought for a girl who loathes change. 

Mondays have become a day of intrigue, an invitation to see what the rest of the week will bring.  My orbits have been turned topsy-turvy – suddenly mornings are night, thoughts are more real than I think, and nightmares have become the dream.  Soon the sun will start crying rain and I’ll really be confused. 

As the week winds down I find myself faced with doubts, and decisions.  Irrational insecurities sweep through, invading my body until I fall wearily to bed.  Days become weeks, years – the faster they come around, the more the need to fill them with activity.  Places to go, people to see, on a regular schedule.  It’s harder to face a future that holds such uncertainty as ours does – no stable work, living month to month, waiting for the next dramatic chapter to unfold.  Every Tuesday and Friday finds me toting my netbook and my thoughts to the restaurant where my friend Josh works.  Each Wednesday night I trek to Berkeley to lay my words on a table to be judged.  Thursdays are a day for introspect.  Habitual therapy is what carries me.

The moon that once encouraged my thoughts now leaves me afraid of their power.  Suddenly the Monday sun isn’t so dastardly, bringing around warm words and a calm harbor. 

Can I embrace these days, revel in their allure?  Or should I be seeking the conventionality that society dictates?  The world does not like Mondays in general, and isn’t accepting of those who see it as anything other than the beginning of a dull existence that loops in five-day cycles.

My inclination is to liven things up.  Shake the tree and see how the Monday topples out.  I know what to expect as I go about my weekly rituals, but Monday is a free-fall. 

What reasons do I need?  None other than to grasp at opportunity. 

Life is too short not to live. 

Saturday may be the longest day, Sunday may be the first day, but life begins on a Monday. 

He always said she was good as gold.  He can see no reasons, and there are no reasons – what reason do you need to die…?

© Kymberlie Ingalls, March 26, 2012

Lyrics: I Don’t Like Mondays / The Boomtown Rats