Monday, Monday

If this day were a person it would totally be my brother’s and my childhood nemesis, Josh Maggot. And yes, that was his real name. He lived up the street from us and used to shoot my brother with his bb gun and call my mother a cunt. I was maybe six, he and my brother would’ve been eight. He had wiry hair and weasel eyes; he was short and mean as a feral dog. Josh Maggot was like a character in a Charles Dickens novel in that everything about him from his name to his physicality accentuated who he was and his lot in life.

October 20th, 2008: This day also seems to go by the moniker of Josh Maggot. From the minute I walked into work the day has been pelting me with bbs hot and hard. At noon I am fairly certain I heard the day call me a cunt. What this day does not seem to know, however, what Josh Maggot himself did not know back then, is that it will remain short, wiry and mean. It will be forever aiming its gun at something, anything, nothing, its mouth full of foul sound. It will grow stunted and dark, limited, while I will grow up, grow tall, go to sleep and wake up to another day. Perhaps tomorrow will have a different name: Serena, maybe, Allaire or Lily. Something soft, I am sure. Or maybe tomorrow will be named Dorothea Shaw. She was my 4th grade teacher, a hippie who would pull us on her lap when we fell on the playground, one hand hovering over the scraped arm or knee. She would wave her hand three inches over the owie in question in rhythmic circles over and over and over, lulling us into silence and then quickly shake her hand off as if the pain were sticky. And it worked. The pain flew away.

Something tells me Josh Maggot didn't have Dorothea Shaw as his 4th grade teacher.

May your day be named something nice and your tomorrow even sweeter.
'Til then.