Well we’ve made it to May 5th, Cinco De Mayo day, the birthday of a famous Mexican. I think Mrs. Taylor, one of my favorite teachers, told us Cinco was the guy that invented tacos (translation: 'tasteless trash') several hundred years ago and shared them with the Spaniards that first landed in Mexico. As I remember it was at a time when the Mexicans invited all the Spanish over to celebrate the exchange of Spanish whiskey for the loco weed the Mexicans had been enjoying for generations. Cinco, always the practical joker, bet another Mexican that he could get these yoyos from the big boats to eat tasteless corn tortillas stuffed with mashed up beans and cat meat. He covered his creation by putting diced tomatoes, onions and shredded lettuce on top with some chunky salsa covering the whole thing. Cinco won the bet and the Spanish liked it so much they opened little taco stands along all the trails in Mexico and sold this newly invented garbage to the armies of Ponce De Leon as they landed. If I’m not wrong these little stands were the fore runners of the now famous Taco Bells that cover the world. In this country Cinco De Mayo is the day when Americans everywhere have the excuse to eat Mexican food and drink Tequila based drinks on a weekday as opposed to waiting for a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night.
Doing things on the right days is important to Americans. With the exception of some Jews, a few Catholics and all the Seventh Day Adventist we have to worship on Sundays. Now I know the Bible says God worked for six days and rested on the seventh, thereby giving us direction for our day of worship, but the book also talks about Sunday being the first day of the week which would make Saturday the seventh. That didn’t work out for us since most of us did our shopping on Saturday, so we just took the count from the day that best suited us and made Sunday the day to worship and said that is what God told us to do. We are pretty good at that kind of thing and I don’t see any need to stop.
Somebody once told us that we should vote on a Tuesday, and we have pretty much stuck to that rule for as long as we’ve been around as a nation. I am going to assume that Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Paul Revere had commissioned a study that found that Tuesday was far enough removed from the weekend to allow full recovery from any hangover and far enough away from Friday to keep us from being distracted. It has worked pretty well up until we elected George W. but I guess one slip-up in 233 years is not all that bad.
Up and until ESPN started televising college football on Thursday nights we were pretty well locked into only watching college football on Saturdays and then only in the fall of the year. We still don’t give much credit to either a win or a loss for any team that plays on any day except Saturday. The losing team did not have enough time to prepare or the winning team only played a patsy the Saturday before and the game is not really a true test for either.
Why don’t they run the Kentucky Derby or the Preakness on a Wednesday or play the Championship game of the Final Four on a Thursday? Is Augusta National closed on any day except Sunday for the final round of the Master’s? One time I’d like to see the Super Bowl played on a Tuesday afternoon or God worshiped on Wednesday morning at 6:30.
Because Cino’s birthday is on the 5th day of May it moves around without any trouble. We get to eat and drink Mexican on a different day of the week every year. We’re just too structured in this country for our own good. Maybe it was the Spanish whiskey or the Mexican loco weed that got it all started in laid-back Mexico.
I’m just glad we had our fore fathers to tell our country which day of the week certain things could be enjoyed. What if we just went around having fun on any day of the week? You would not even know the day Boston Legal was going to be on television.
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