Sunday Funday.

I don't think I'll every full understand Sunday.

It might not be until I'm married, or I'm married & I have kids, or maybe I won't understand what to do with myself on Sunday until I'm an old, old man in an old, old retirement home- probably in Maine. Maybe then, perhaps I'll understand Sunday. But as it stands now and up until this point, I just haven't been able to figure out what to do with myself on Sunday and it's starting to make me wish we could bypass the day altogether and press straight on til Monday.

Working folks probably won't appreciate that sentiment, but then they probably appreciate Sunday far more than I do so we're never going to see eye to eye. I'm not religious and I don't play golf. The Sunday paper is always something to do and on the deck with a nice cup of coffee, I'm hard pressed to think of better ways to start a week. Dinner at Erin's is always good, so is going up to Jenkintown, and the bar was set back in the day by Mrs. Walsh, when we'd go to the Walshes for Sunday night dinner.

Sundays make more sense when I'm working I guess. This goes back to not ever really having a real job- one with a real schedule, since graduating college. I've worked six day work weeks, but none that followed any set pattern. On the boats, I had weekdays off and two winters, spent twelve hours every Sunday going up and down the bay- fighting shitty weather, shitty hangovers, and shitty microwave dinners. Sundays on the Soap Box tour were the sludge brain days and were usually more of a continuation of Saturday or an extension of Monday than a day onto itself. I don't even remember a Sunday before I started my paper route in middle school, but I distinctly remember the majority of them after I started chucking papers on the two streets over from ours.

Every Sunday morning, Dad and I woke up to go grab the bundles that had been dropped off in the driveway. When Dad was out of town for work, Mom would fill in. We put them together in the kitchen- the main section with the classifieds and then loaded them into the station wagon. Then we started at the bottom of Primrose and for the next hour, Dad drove while I ran from house to house, singing Pearl Jam songs and grabbing papers from the back of the car. The holidays were the worst and I hated going around collecting money from people. I always felt I was bothering them at the worst possible time and certain people on the route had some seriously foul-smelling houses with odors that ranged from mildewy pasta to an abundance of dirty ass cats, birds, and old people. Although I still remember the afternoon when I stopped by one house and the dude's daughter, tan with long, brown hair in a bikini, light blue, answered the door- the kind of shit dreams are made of. But the kind of shit that reality smacks you in the face with.

Yes, girls like her always have a little something something for the newspaper boy. It's the blue money bag that they really go for, all of those rolled up nickels and dimes. Boo yah!

For probably a few good reasons and several bad reasons, I don't remember a single Sunday during college.

But now, older and drifting along, I'm found a little lost on Sundays when I don't have to work or have something scheduled. I don't know if it's the lack of purpose or the general malaise of the day- but I have the hardest time trying to figure out what to do with myself. I can't stop looking at the clock, as if that means something today, but it really doesn't mean shit because Entourage isn't on until 10:30. I put together some tasks, some things to do and over the course of the morning, they become prioritized. Their meaninglessness has long since been discarded and now it has become crucial to trim my side burns and swiffer the kitchen.

It might change when I'm married or even seriously involved with a lady. I've always noticed that Sunday is a couples day so maybe a full on relationship will open up possibilities on Sunday that I couldn't even have thought of before. There might be stores I didn't even know existed that I need to go to or parks that I was unaware of that need to be traversed. That could be hoping too much though- putting too much stock in trivial things like weekends and taking things leisurely or cranking out a personal to-do list.

Ultimately it just makes me nervous that I really won't be able to handle retirement and I will want to work until I die. I'll be like the Dream Team at Air Race- Rick & Jerry, two old retired vets, still working as day laborers- for this assignment, cleaning up shit at a f'd up temporary international airport a mile or so from the Mexican border. On the last day, Jerry was a no show and Rick was visibly concerned all day. I was too, but also too goddamn exhausted to try and conjour up the kind of emotions needed to wonder, where the hell was Jerry?

Jerry and I talked quite a bit and had a few lively debates about a wide range of topics. I wouldn't let his Yankees hat get in the way and we were both pretty happy when Manny got busted for steroids. I never did get Jerry's take on Sundays though. He worked on two of them, but I never got the impression that he felt a certain way about it.

Really he was just stoked to have something to do.

And that, much more than enjoying a lazy Sunday, is something I can relate too.

Hope you're okay, Jerry. You did a hell of a job.