Dividing the week into seven days apparently worked pretty well for the ancients, but it’s not enough for modern times.
Contrary to the belief of my two teens, I was not born in ancient times, so I can’t speak from personal experience. However, I am still fairly comfortable stating that life moves a lot faster nowadays. It’s getting faster for everyone, but especially for us 40-somethings.
I have certain things I do once a week, like writing this column, for instance. At home, most of us have a list of cleaning chores we tackle once a week.
But the older I get and the faster my time flies, the more I realize a seven-day week is just too short. It feels like I no sooner write a column or deal with the dirty laundry (not much difference there, some might say) than it’s time to do it all over again.
Many’s the time, when getting ready to tackle a weekly chore, that I’ve asked, “Didn’t I just do this a couple of days ago?”
As Andy Rooney said,
“ ... life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.”
Already a week seems to go by in two or three days. I fear at this rate, by the time I’m 50, a month will fly by in maybe four days. And by the time I’m 65, I suppose it won’t even be worth checking the calendar to see what day it is, because each day will only last an hour anyway. I imagine that if I live to be 100, my entire 90s will pass by in a few weeks.
In contrast, don’t we all recall endless childhood summer vacations?
I can’t do anything about time moving faster, but we could perhaps fudge things a bit by making the week longer. I suggest we add three more days, giving us a 10-day week.
We’ve given this seven-day calendar idea thousands of years, and I think that’s plenty. Plus, it’s inconvenient that weeks are an odd number of days. If you want to schedule something for twice a week, there’s no way to do it without having an unequal spacing between the two.
We have to decide how to add in the extra three days — five-day weekend, anyone? — and what we’d call them. I already know what I’d do with the extra three days, so I hereby suggest we name the three new days Wrapday, Funday and Napday.
