Monday, Monday and the Sunday Before

Used to be when I was younger, Saturdays

were meant for parties—in my thirties and

forties, friends and neighbors over for

dinners, snacks, cigars, cigarettes, lots

of liquor and laughs. In my late teens and

early twenties it was dancing, bar hopping

and booze as an enlisted Army guy out on

the town. Those days of carefree frivolity

are long gone for me. Can’t handle any of

that now in my seventies. Sometimes I won-

der how I made it through all that to this.

The smoking, booze and intoxication, all the

excesses of my youth should have done me

in some time ago. Somehow, I managed to

wake up Sunday anyway. Sunday, now there

was a day. Sundays were infamously meant

to pay. Sundays were supposed to be for

attending church, I was raised to believe.

But back in the day they were observed

with hangovers and regrets. Sunday, a

gloomy bury-my-head day, I would say,

for Monday and the work week were sure

to follow. I no longer party; I gave up the

booze and religion a time ago. Many of

my friends are dead now, the neighbors and

I have long since moved away. Even though

I am retired now with no workplace to go,

those dreaded Mondays still keep coming

around. Sometimes you just have to bite the

bullet, I suppose, and go with the flow.

Chris Hanch 12-14-19