On Monday, I was driving on West Fairview Avenue in Carthage when I had to stop because a work crew was doing something to the road.
“What is the matter with these guys?” I asked my wife. “Don’t they know today is Labor Day?”
See, in this country we take one day a year to pay tribute to the Great American Working Class. Basically, what we say to the Great American Working Class is: “Good job, Great American Working Class. Well, those of you who are lucky enough to have a job. Now, take a day off.”
To me, it’s sort of like honoring our Great American Congress Creatures by going to work and getting something done.
But that’s just me.
At our house, my 12-year-old daughter, Emma, and I celebrate Labor Day by watching my wife — who is also Emma’s mother (sometimes, in this day of the “Modern Family,” you have to clarify those things) — try and clear our dining room table.
At our house, a major holiday is defined this way: Do we get the day off from work?
For example, at our house, Labor Day is a major holiday. Columbus Day is not. Memorial Day, at our house, is a major holiday. Presidents Day is not.
Anyway, on most major holidays, we normally have my mother-in-law and sister-in-law over for dinner. When we have company over for dinner, we use our dining room table for dining. On the 300-plus days of the year that are not major holidays, we don’t use our dining room table.
Well, that’s not true. We do use our dining room table. We just don’t use it for dining.
Nope, on the 300-plus days that are not major holidays, we use our dining room table as a storage table.
Say I get home from work and retrieve the mail. I will quickly scan the mail to see if we won a zillion dollars. If we didn’t win a zillion dollars, I toss the mail on the dining room table.
Later, when my wife comes home and asks if we got any mail, I’ll say, “Yeah, just bills. I put them on the dining room table.” And my wife will say, “OK,” and that will be it for the pile of mail.
The two of us will repeat this process until half of our dining room table contains several weeks worth of unopened mail.
The other half of our dining room table holds three to four months worth of my wife’s work-related items.
What happens is, my wife will come home from work toting a host of work-related items and set them on the dining room table.
“I’m just putting this here for tonight,” my wife will say, knowing full well that she likely won’t see those work-related items for at least three months.
“OK,” I will say, knowing full well that those work-related items will remain on the dining room table until the next sports season.
Sure, I could say something like, “Oh no you don’t. You put those work-related items where they belong.”
But I also could stick my hand into a working toaster.
It would be a dumb thing to do, is what I’m saying.
But when a major holiday rolls around, my wife has to do something with all the stuff on our dining room table in order for us to use our dining room table for the purpose that God created it: dining.
What my wife does is get up early on the major holiday and carefully go through each item on the table and return it to its proper place.
HAHAHAHAHAHA, I crack myself up.
No, what my wife does, minutes before our company arrives, is grab a handful of big, black trash bags and toss everything on the table into them. Every once in a while, my wife has to stop tossing stuff into the trash bags and call me to grab one of the cats that fell asleep on the table and woke up in a trash bag.
Here’s an animal tip: Cats don’t like to wake up in a trash bag.
Once the trash bags are full of old mail and my wife’s work-related items, my wife carries the bags upstairs and puts them in our bedroom.
“I’m just leaving these here until tomorrow, and then I’ll put them where they belong,” my wife says, knowing full well she will never look at the trash bags again.
“OK,” I will say, knowing full well that the trash bags will stay where they are until Emma graduates from college.
Sure, I could say, “No you don’t. You put that stuff away right now.”
But come on, do I have “stupid” written all over my face?
Besides, it’s Labor Day. I don’t want to make some emergency room doctor work.
Local News
Mike Pound: Dining room table put to work on Labor Day
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