How Each Day of the Week Feels Different

♥ Have you ever given any thought to how the different days of the week feel? I remember as a teenager how I always looked forward to Friday nights and the “Gillette Cavalcade of Sports†boxing matches (1942-1960). We got our first TV in 1951 (Philco 12â€) and every Friday night our family watched the fights. So, Friday was always, to my younger brother and me, a day filled with anticipation. When I started dating at age 15, I spent my Friday evenings at my girlfriend’s home. As an adult in the workforce, that day was always the harbinger of the weekend and the excitement that followed.

Sunday mornings always had a good feeling. As a young boy, we had breakfast early and dressed for Sunday School and church. My mother always put a nickel in our hands, and my brother and I would walk down the hill to church, less than two minutes away. In the afternoon, we would go to the nearest town (Grundy) and watch the latest movie at the Lynwood theater. My mother always looked forward to that, and she was especially pleased if it was a musical. She could watch musicals until the sun went down the woodchuck hole. As an adult, I always dreaded Sunday evenings because I sensed the closeness of Monday morning. It was always so until I retired, then not so much 😊.

I can mostly tell the days during the week because we walk trails on three of them, and I go to the gym on the other two. Without that schedule, I would be unable to discern which day it could be. That happens a lot with old, retired people.

“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.†— Crowfoot

♥ Back in December 2019, I bought a drone, and a very good one at that. It has all the latest technology, the ability to avoid objects, to return home on its own when the battery gets low, and it even has a mode that allows it to focus on me and follow wherever I go.

I have watched many videos on how to fly that thing, and I’m getting fairly confident in handling it, or at least I thought I was. My grandson (bonus grandson-Brandon) was at our cottage the other day helping us with some chores, and I took him out to the shared common area behind our cottage and showed him how to operate it. Within twenty minutes, his skill level had surpassed mine. He turns twenty-seven this month, so that’s understandable. 😊. I have nick-named the drone, “The Eagle†because of my first successful takeoff and landing, i.e., “Houston, the Eagle has landed.†I am mindful that some of my neighbors may be annoyed with it flying around our neighborhood, thinking it’s “Big Brother,†or some nosey person spying on them. When, in fact, it’s just an old guy trying to add some excitement to his life by developing new skills and trying to look beyond his current surroundings in ways he’s never had the opportunity to do before. I must admit, I am awaiting a call from the CEO of our retirement community telling me that drone flying is not permissible on campus. I hope he doesn’t do that but, somehow, I suspect he will. However, until he does, the commander of Battlestar Galactica will continue flying missions up to five miles away (the distance limit of The Eagle).

Marcus Garvey said,†Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequencesâ€. I’m desperately trying to be that guy 😊.

🧡 The other night my wife and I watched one of my favorite movies, “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly,†a 1966 Italian Spaghetti Western movie starring Clint Eastwood (the Good), Lee Van Cleef (the Bad) and Eli Wallach (the Ugly). It is the third and final film in the “Dollars Trilogy†and was most responsible for making Clint a movie star. They filmed it in Spain, and it made him financially successful. The other two movies in the trilogy are, “A Fistful of Dollars†and “For a Few Dollars More.†I had forgotten the movie was three hours long, so it definitely made us late getting into bed. As I sat there watching it, the thought crossed my mind that I was 25 years old when it hit the big screen, and now look at me, an old man watching movies from his youth trying to glimpse what life was like at that age. The night before, we watched Clint’s latest movie, “Cry Macho.†It’s a tale of him going into Mexico to bring back the 13-year-old son of his employer (Dwight Yoakum). A couple of days ago, we watched another of Clint’s movies, “Pale Rider†(1985). As you can see, we are on a Clint Eastwood roll.

We are ready to move on to other things to watch on TV. I have the recorder setup to catch Ken Burns’ new effort on PBS tonight (Sunday 9/19/21), titled “Mohammed Aliâ€. I believe the series last eight hours, so that’s a lot about him. I’m hoping it will change my opinion since I was never a major fan.

I thought he was a skilled boxer, never like him as a braggart, and disliked it when he avoided the draft during the Vietnam war. It was hard for me to accept someone that will knock a person’s brains out but was unwilling to serve his country for religious reasons during a time of war. You have probably surmised that I thought badly of our young men that fled to Canada to do the same thing during that time period. I believe President Jimmy Carter made a serious mistake by issuing pardons to them. The Supreme Court overturned Ali’s conviction on a technicality (the Government failed to specify why they rejected his appeal as a conscientious objector) and that also disappointed me.

Anyway, I hope Ken Burns changes my mind about Ali

â™¥ï¸ There are times when I find myself staying busy, just to stay busy. In other words, I’m just shoveling smoke. What’s sad about the whole things is, I’m mostly not aware of it! I can look back over my past 29,500 days on this planet and see that I’ve wasted a lot of time watching endless TV shows, movies, and ballgames. I didn’t party much, but when I did, it was always too hard!

I wonder if I could do it all over again, would I make the same mistakes? My wife and I watched the World Series with the Houston Astros & Atlanta Braves. It’s hard to justify the time spent on that endeavor at my age. I’m confident there are better things to do, I just don’t have the motivation to find out what they are. I guess I could try dancing on one leg, or playing the guitar left-handed, but none seemed like a wise investment of my time.

I’m thinking that when we get to the end of our life, Saint Peter will look at how much time we spent watching TV and criticize us for wasting so much of our valuable time on this wonderful planet. Yup, there’s probably a box on his checkoff list that says, “Watched too much TV”!

If he lets me in, I’m confident he will admonish me with, “Well, you won’t be doing any of that up here Mr. Hale!” I wonder if I still have enough time left to change my ways, or is it too late?

No doubt the best thing to do is spend more time with family and friends, work harder on making relationships stronger, and improve the way we treat those less fortunate.

Shakespeare said, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.†Sadly, I have never thought of myself as a fool ☹.