Hooked on Chaos: My Son Has an Eight-Day Weekby
Tom Chartier The start of a new school year always brings surprises. This year is no exception. My twelve-year-old son has an eight-day school week. Stop laughing! I’m serious. Sure… We all know the old joke about working eight days a week, but this is for real. Last time I looked, there were seven days in a week. Has that been changed by some presidential signing statement? Is the eighth day the one on which "Second Life" created God? Well, let’s assume that Construction Chicks calendar in the garage is telling the truth. Of the seven days in the standard week, how many are for work or school? Easy… five. Unless you’re "uniquely American" working three jobs to make ends meet you probably only have a six-and-three-quarters-day workweek. Get to work you slacker! If you are a stay-at-home-parent your workweek is either 365 or zero days… depends on who’s counting. The last of a dying breed, school-age kids have a five-day school week followed by two free days to blow up stuff. To be sure, those two "free" days increasingly are devoted to a putrid heap of homework and character development projects. Well, we want the little rascals to grow up into nice, obedient corporate slaves, don’t we? "Thank you SIR!! May I please have another?!" While the battery in my iBrain recharges, tell me… five plus two equals seven… right? Well then, why does my son have an eight-day school week schedule? I’m as much a fan of the absurd as any twisted (vernacular unacceptable) but even Salvador Dali couldn’t dream up this. Here’s how it works if you want to make a week of eight days: Monday is Day One. This makes Friday, Day Five. But there are still three more days needed. Subtract Saturday and Sunday. They are no longer part of the week. That means the second Monday becomes Day Six. In turn, the second Wednesday is the eighth day of the "week." This makes the second Thursday, Day One of a new week. Therefore it will take three or five weeks depending on how you count, before Monday is Day One again. However, it is ludicrous to count our eight days using the standard base ten system. Instead, we should use base seven because the week once had seven days. This would turn Day Eight into Day Eleven, if I know what I’m talking about and I don’t. According to Chartier’s First Rule of Utilitarian Ephemera, Day Eleven (or if you prefer, Day Eight) never exists unless Grandma leaves Omaha at 3:00 PM EST and travels at a steadily increasing velocity rate along the X-axis towards Y, approaching the speed of light. While Grandma’s velocity increases so does her mass and it ain’t from the Christmas cookies. The increase of Grandma’s mass with the corresponding increase of speed can be graphed along the X-Y axis forming a hyperbola that reaches towards the infinite. Conversely the closer to the speed of light Grandma gets and the closer her mass nears infinity, time slows down until… theoretically, it stops. Hence, Grandma never makes it to the party and Day Eleven (Day Eight in base ten) never exists, at which point one finds a partridge in a pear tree. Now, would someone please direct me to my remedial existentialism class? I’m not sure where along the space/time continuum it exists. See how simple and logical this is? I don’t! That spiraling-out-of-control- math-program spirochete seems to have infected somebody in the administrative office. I’ve ruled out mercury or lead poisoning. Harboring the delusion that children benefit from the discipline of routine, I thought that molding young minds through the use of chaos resulted in social deviants who set cats on fire, hear the voice of God and enjoy blowing up stuff. We don’t want that now… Or do we? The U.S. Army does need recruits. Maybe this is a Bold New Future? If the world is "Hooked on Chaos"™ and I have no fear that it isn’t, maybe we need to foster chaos in our children so that they can uh… compete? It seems to have worked well for Britney Spears and Michael Jackson. At least Scout and Jem Finch and their neighbor "Dill," got their two days off (all the better to finish that 47-page essay on Kafka). Hey, what’s childhood for? Harper Lee thought a plaster of Paris ham costume was good enough. Sure looks to me like some pointy-headed college expert’s been… well… thinking too much? (Kind of like those guitar amps that go to eleven… except that makes more sense.) Oh well what do I know? I’m gettin’ on in years and don’t take to these new-fangled ideas. All change is evil, that’s my family motto. Better stomp on the mutation while it’s newborn and helpless.
And… there are eight days in a week. Elizabeth Gyllensvard contributed to and edited this story. September 6, 2007 Tom Chartier [send him mail] played lead guitar in legendary Los Angeles punk band The Rotters for 26 years until their final appearance in January of 2004. He has lived in Tokyo and Los Angeles. Currently he resides somewhere in the Caribbean. Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com |
Still,
there’s no use fighting "progress." I give in. 