Mondays happen, we can’t stop ’em

OPINION / HUMOR — Mondays happen no matter what. It’s Monday’s destiny to be a ‘Monday.’ No matter what we do to try to stop it, or just slow down time to avoid the inevitable Monday, it’ll be here before we know it.

Mondays are different for everyone, it’s more of a metaphor than an actual day. My Mondays used to start on Tuesdays, while other’s Monday might be on Friday.

Monday has also grown to represent the dread of the week. It doesn’t always mean it’s the first day back at work after a weekend, it can just be a day where everything goes wrong and by the end of the day you’re so glad it’s over, you don’t want to experience another one of those “today felt like a Monday” days.

Mondays are like Mogwai and the Gremlins. No matter how careful you are — no matter how well you plan, the disaster work day still happens.

Personally, my worst ‘Mondays’ always occur the first couple of weeks around the time we change our clocks for daylight savings time, as it begins and ends.

While we won’t be changing our clocks again until Nov. 2 this year, this should give you plenty of time to think about it, dread it, and watch Gremlins, if the urge strikes you to do so.

(It all ties together, stay with me)

I ruined a movie one time at a friend’s birthday party when I was probably 8 or 9 years old.

I was maybe in the 3rd grade, at a birthday party sleepover, and the kid’s mom let us watch Gremlins before bed time.

My momma would have NEVER let me watch that movie, which was okay with me, because I’ve never been a horror movie fan, not even a low-brow PG horror movie.

I think it must have been not long after daylight savings time change that this event happened, because time change was on my mind.

By now, you all know the movie plot of Gremlins — a kid named Randall gets a fury little creature named Mogwai and he’s given strict instructions about the care of Mogwai:

1. Don’t let it be exposed to sunlight.

2. Don’t let it come into contact with water.

3. Don’t feed it after midnight.

I didn’t care less about 1 & 2. I was a kid, those made sense - whatever.  Follow the rules —

But, the “Don’t feed it after midnight” didn’t sit well with me.

Here’s where my cognitive dissonance of the subject came into play.

And please give me a break when you read this - I was a kid, trying to make sense of something that came across as a major hypothetical problem in my young brain.

What happens after daylight savings?

Does the rule “don’t feed it after midnight” move forward or back an hour depending on fall back or spring forward? Does it stay then same?

These are things a kid needs to know so if I ever was given my own Mogwai it won’t be a complete disaster.

As for every kid in that living room that night, Mogwai didn’t ruin anything — I did.

Ultimately, in the end, it didn’t matter what daylight savings would play in a scenario like this one, he messes up anyways.

But I started thinking about it…

What if Mogwai goes to another time zone?

I had family in Dallas, TX, and I knew that they were always an hour behind us.

Does Mogwai know it’s in a different time zone?  How would that work if I had my own Mogwai and snuck it in my suitcase to go to Dallas? How does the not feeding after midnight work, hypothetically— so 11 pm?

How would it know?  That could cause some serious problems with the towns folk.

I asked all these questions— I could see the faces of some of my friends as if a lightbulb came on, while others gave me a weird look and just wanted to mindlessly enjoy the movie.

I asked the birthday kid’s mom what she thought, and although I can’t remember what she said — I don’t remember ever getting invited over there again.

I guess I ruined it for everyone - parents included, not just my friends at the time.

Before the movie was over, half the kids lost interest and wanted to go play with toys or whatever - maybe two kids still remained watching Gremlins.

The kid whose birthday it was, clearly wasn’t happy with me, but he wasn’t a mean kid; very nice and shy but it was obvious I had ruined this movie experience he had wanted to watch with his friends on his birthday…

I’ve never forgotten about that; I still think of it for a second in the back of my mind, and kinda smirk about it, when daylight savings begins or ends, or if I see something about the movie Gremlins.

I’m not sure why I had to be that kid to question the authenticity of a make-believe movie. Maybe it was because I wasn’t interested in watching a horror movie right before bed time, and I knew my parents wouldn’t approve if they found out — or maybe that was how my brain was wired at an early age and we are who we are — but I never talked about daylight savings again after that — not in a way to ruin something for anyone else.

The one thing that still perplexes me today is, I’m not sure how I have a creative mind, while at the same time get annoyed to understand and call out and question something when it doesn’t make sense.  I’m the antithesis of my own creativity; I put the moron in the oxymoron of my own intelligence.

I quickly learned to just enjoy a movie after that — no matter how bad it is — or I lose interest and move on to do something else, but to this day, I still never got an answer ….

If you accidentally feed Mogwai after midnight at 12:15 and it was considered 11:15 pm just the night before, are we all good? No…?

I guess it doesn’t matter, because regardless, the gremlins are going to come out, run havoc and ruin the whole town. (You know what I’m talking about, don’t’cha, Cracker Barrel?)

Call it fate or whatever you want, it was bound to happen — just like we are who we are and Monday comes no matter what  — gremlins ruined a town that night and I was meant to ruin that movie for my 8 yr old friends.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses, none of us are perfect, but when it comes to movies, some are obviously more entertaining than others.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Gremlins all the way through, and to this day I have no interest in watching it from start to finish.

And someone might read this and later text or message me on here and say, “How have you never watched that movie from start to finish?”

I’ll give you my answer right now —

It’s not something I care to watch - and like Mogwai, the devil may care, but I don’t.

And just like gremlins, bad Mondays happen; and they can be just as unpleasant and ugly.

Look on the bright side — Monday will be over soon, and then it’ll be Friday again before you know it.

I wonder what happens if I have to pee after midnight? There was never a 4th rule…

If I have to pee after midnight, I probably turn into a middle-aged man whose bladder ain’t what it used to be.

Guess I’ll find out.

I hope you all have a happy Monday.

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