The world is full of all kinds of mysterious things, such as the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. Very few people have ever been able to catch a glimpse of these wonders, but there is one oddity that everyone gets to experience each and every week.
It is known as Tuesday.
To refer to Tuesday as a mystery may seem a bit outlandish, but think about it for a second. What purpose does Tuesday serve? Look at the other six days and you'll get the idea.
Monday: Although many people despise Mondays like the plague, Mondays have an obvious meaning. They act as the beginning of the work and school week.
Wednesday: It's the middle of the week, a.k.a. Hump Day. Get through Wednesday, and it is all downhill.
Thursday: At first glance, Thursday may be irrelevant like Tuesday, but it is not. Think of the feelings that come with Thursday. There is excitement and longing for the following day, because we know it will be the last of the work week. In effect, Thursday is Friday's Friday.
Friday: No one can argue against the goodness of Friday. The work is behind, and relaxation lies ahead.
Saturday and Sunday: These two days are the wonder twins we call the weekend. They are time for fun, sleep, catching up or getting ahead. In that way, they are somewhat like the duct tape of days: a thousand uses.
So what's Tuesday's job?
Think of the week in terms of a Major League Baseball team's pitching staff. There's an ace starter (Monday), a consistent middle reliever (Wednesday), a make-'em-shout specialist (Thursday), a surefire closer (Friday) and then a couple of mop-up guys (Saturday and Sunday).
There just doesn't seem to be any room on the team for Tuesday. Most likely, if Tuesday is actually a pitcher, it would still be stuck down at Triple-A waiting for some kind of injury to come along so it could get its shot at the bigs.
Tuesday is doomed to be constantly disappointed, though, because days don't take days off, tear rotator cuffs or retire. They just keep on rolling along.
So where did Tuesday go so terribly wrong to upset the almighty calendar and get dumped into such a meaningless position?
The obvious answer seems to be Oct. 29, 1929, or "Black Tuesday." This was the day that the stock market took the gigantic nosedive that marked the beginning of the Great Depression.
Tuesdays are a lot older than that, though, so that can't be it. To find the answer, we have to jog back to mythology and the origin of the word "Tuesday."
Even in Anglo-Saxon society, there used to be a different god for everything. The god of law and war was named Tiw, which is where (don't ask me how) the first syllable of Tuesday comes from. So in some roundabout way, Tuesday could actually be considered "war day."
Once you take that into account, maybe it is for the best that Tuesday just remains meaningless. It would really ruin the rest of the week if every Tuesday a war broke out just because that was the purpose of the day.
So we should all be glad that Tuesday isn't doing its job, or else there would be even more bloodshed in this world.
Here's to Tuesday, the sympathetic slacker of the week.
Write to Cole at cpmcgrath@bsu.edu
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