The Second Day of the Week
For those of you who have lost track, it’s Tuesday.
I was immediately confused to learn that Tuesday is sometimes not the second day of the week. In a large amount of U.S. calendars, Sunday is the first day of the week, which is just nonsense. Even if Sunday is the first day of the week, Tuesday is still not the third day of the week. That’s just basic science, folks.
Tuesday’s etymology is often associated with Mars, the god of war. Even in Japan, which I thought was a bit odd. Even in the Thai solar calendar, the day is named for the Pali word for the planet Mars. In the old folk rhyme Monday’s Child, “Tuesday’s child is full of grace”. Keep that in mind next time you are elbows deep in a plate of tacos.
Taco Tuesday doesn’t even show up on the Wiki page for the day. I had to do a whole separate search for that. Turns out there is a restaurant in Wyoming, of all places, that has a trademark of the phrase. Their exclusive rights to “Taco Tuesday” extend to the entire U.S. except for New Jersey (obviously?), because some other enterprising diner has taken the trademark there in 1982. Neither proprietor has been to aggressive about enforcing their trademark. The executives at Taco Bell must be kicking themselves.
I worked for GameStop for 7 years without realizing that games released on Tuesday because of an old marketing gambit by Sega for Sonic the Hedgehog’s sequel. Sega chose a clever slogan, “Sonic 2s day” for their advertising. It was catchy enough to make the game popular before it even released, a tactic akin to the blockbuster movie strategies, where the budget, hype, and size of a motion picture often made it a financial success regardless of the quality of the movie itself. This heritage is largely attributed to the Star Wars franchise.
There are many interesting facts about Tuesday. One hot topic has been the fact that it is the election day in November for the United States. I was surprised to find out that it is because back in 1844, when it was established, it was determined that most citizens took a full day to get to a polling place and it was unlikely that they would begin their journey on a Sunday or want to start the trek back on a Saturday, so Tuesday seemed the most appropriate choice.
See? Can we stop complaining now? It makes perfect sense to keep it this way in 2020.
Back in “Ye Olde Days of Yore” when we used to buy records and CD’s, music was released on Tuesdays. I still can’t track down an explanation. In fact, a research article done by NPR in 2010 found, “Honestly, no one seems to know for sure. It's more like a tradition with murky origins.” It seems like the exact same thing Eddie Van Halen would say about David Lee Roth’s attire. There are plenty of explanations as to why other days of the week were not good days to launch an album, but none that mark Tuesday as a particularly exceptional one.
Tuesday doesn’t mean anything special to me, personally. I used to think for years that I was born on Easter Sunday. One day it occurred to me that I could just look it up and check, and it turns out I had been lying to myself. I was born on Wednesday. My birthday occasionally lands on Easter, but the old tale of “I was born on Easter and my brother was born on Christmas Eve”, (this is true, my brother’s birthday is easily confirmed and has no murky origins) is now one that has died away with a Google search. Seems it is true, the old rhyme. “Wednesday’s child is full of woe.”
I used to love the band ‘Till Tuesday’s song “Voices Carry”. I wrote a 6-page research paper about it for a class about culture. I still love the song, but it is a little hard to hear it over the grocery store radio. It always hits me a little hard in the chest when I hear songs that I thought were edgy or cool on the radio at the grocery store. I don’t know why. It just makes me feel like lowering my eyes, or something. Now that grocery stores are one of the only places to hear music in public, maybe I can lose those old prejudices and hold my head a bit higher. I honestly don’t know how grocery stores haven’t turned into dance clubs, what with its exclusivity on music in public.
The Cure might have said that Tuesday is grey and just have carelessly lumped it in with Wednesday, because Friday I’m in love, but I’m going to say that tacos have a power that can’t be underestimated. So next time Aimee Mann comes on, don’t be afraid to drop everything and start shouting out, whatever aisle you’re on. Just like in her video: