Friday Night is Pretty All Right (ms)
It’s Friday night as I sit and write; it is in my view the very best night of the week. Now of course there are many who say Saturday night fits the bill for them and I can’t argue with that. More years ago than I want to count I wholeheartedly agreed that Saturday night was the crown jewel of any week in the year, but I moved on.
I’m not sure what happened, how it happened but Friday night became for me the night most looked forward to out of seven possibilities. I would mark it each week with a stop at the store for some snacks and things and bring them home. We would all sit around then and munch on food with the fat content of a dairy cow and the nutritional value of the greasy paper lining the bottom of a pizza box. Nobody cared, it was Friday. We would play some movie like Resurrection of the Swamp People and kick back and just enjoy it for its tacky foolishness. Oh the good times they did roll.
My thinking is that Friday is to the end of the week what Monday is to the beginning. The workweek is over, shut the door and say so long, two days of fun and frolic lie ahead and Friday night is like standing on the threshold waiting to take that first step. No matter what happens during the trip it is almost certain to be better than the week just past and could be counted on to make the one ahead at least a bit more palatable. It’s the anticipation of it all, you see, the knowing but not knowing about the two coming days. Friday nights offered a break from the mind glazing routine offered by work and the weekend extended it. How could one not be happy?
Saturday of course would dawn and the weekend would roll on finishing up Sunday night with the dull realization that Monday was but a few hours away. Monday, as we all well know, brings another work week curiously similar to the one just passed and the one before that; no doubt it looks like the one that will occur a year from now. The week ahead is marked by Wednesday (Hump Day) and the return of that grand and glorious singular night of the week: Friday. Ah, just saying it in my mind makes me feel lighter, more relaxed, better able to face the trials and tribulations of the week knowing that my reward is straight ahead just past Thursday.
Friday night has made a spot for itself in my book of good things to be enjoyed in the here and now. When I finish this little literary effort I think I shall shut the lid on my laptop and wander off to the kitchen for a bowl of something cold and creamy perhaps flavored by peanut butter or chocolate covered pretzels. It is Friday night, is it not? What better excuse do I need than that!
—Mike Stevens
Riding Both Rails 