‘Round these progressive parts we give our local schoolchildren (and their teachers!) not only today off for Presidents’ Day (or whatever it’s called), but also tomorrow for Lunar New Year.
Let the record show “Lunar New Year” is the thing we used to call Chinese New Year and this year has fallen so nicely into our Gregorian calendar.
Having Monday and Tuesday off from work or school really is better than a 40% reduction in number of workdays in a week. I’ve pondered these ratios before but now I think it’s time to codify these things.
No rational person thinks that considering the sequence of the week each day should be weighted equally. Your average Monday is way more stressful and exhausting than Thursday or Friday, for example. Just ask Garfield.
If I were to proportion the days of the week accordingly I think I’d place them about like so:
Monday… 30%
Tuesday… 25%
Wednesday… 20%
Thursday… 15%
Friday… 10%
Let the record show I didn’t round these numbers. I fiddled around with percents that didn’t end with five or zero but I kept coming back to the friendlier resolutions. The math teacher in me enjoys pointing out that it’s not a five percent decrease each day, but rather five percentage points. If you really wanted to note the percent difference each day the differences are… different. (One-sixth, one-fifth, one-fourth, one-third… kind of a cool pattern if you look at them as fractions.)
And Monday and Tuesday together? That’s more than half the week. More than half the real week. Those two days constitute 55% of the stress and heartache of an average week.
So thank you, presidents and Lunar New Year celebrants. See you in the remaining 45%.