Monday's Revenge

Today started benignly enough, unless you’re bothered by balancing a handbag, a tote bag, a travel mug, and an umbrella with a humorously short handle with a dangerously sharp broken edge. I wasn’t…much. I made two trips.

After homeroom I rushed around making photocopies of a quiz for all my students and Bible curriculum and a student literature workbook for my newly returned student, whom I’m exceedingly happy to welcome back. But I was so busy that I didn’t make it down to the kitchen to get a cup of hot coffee until the beginning of third period. I slipped the cup inside my podium and led my Cults & World Religions class in a Jeopardy style review of chapter one, intermittently enjoying sips. 

Then the coffee attacked me. 

It leaped out of the podium and onto the green carpet. On the way down it deposited a puddle on the podium’s bottom shelf and baptized my dress, the lovely blue one with the daisies print.

Perhaps it thought baptism an appropriate activity for a religion class, not realizing that I had already been baptized on December 31, 1966 at the Broadway Baptist Church in Paterson, New Jersey. Perhaps it also did not realize the carpet had been baptized as well, many times, the most memorable being when a student dropped a glass bottle of soda which exploded, shooting sarsaparilla and shards in a pattern a CSI would have loved. (My son has a scar from the piece that flew into his leg.)

“Paper towels!” I cried, and my students obliged. Where’s a Sham-Wow when you need one? It would have sucked the coffee right out of the carpet and my dress. I dried the carpet, my foot, sandal, and dress as best as I could, while the students headed for lunch. 

I calculated I could drive home, change clothes, and make it back before fourth period. But who wants to miss grilled cheese and tomato soup? Not me. I wore my stained, soggy, but very fragrant dress to the cafeteria. (Coffee + Bailey’s creamer = Yum.)

My dress dried by the time I left school later this afternoon. Cruising through downtown Watsontown, I suddenly remembered my husband wanted me to take a deposit to the bank. I turned off Main Street and headed for the drive through window. It was then that I realized why my burden had felt light when I left school:  I didn’t have my handbag. 

I returned to the school to retrieve it, knowing I had missed my window of opportunity to make the deposit, since the bank closes at 4:00. No problem. This has happened to me before. (Not the handbag part, but the bank closing part.) Then I just go to the Milton branch. It stays open longer.

Back in the car with my handbag and the deposit, I drove through Watsontown again and then out of my way to the Milton branch…which has shortened its hours to match the Watsontown branch. 

Typical Monday. 

“But,” you protest, “today isn’t Monday. It’s Tuesday.” I have a theory about that: 

When we cancel Monday, as we frequently do to observe federal holidays, it just shows up on Tuesday. Only now it’s perturbed. Ticked off. It has even more of an attitude. It’s like Monday squared. Monday Monday.

Like the Mamas and the Papas said, “Can’t trust that day.” 

Especially if it falls on a Tuesday.