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Tuesday

February 7, 2025

It was a Tuesday. Objectively, the most hateable day of the week. Historically, Tuesdays became unlucky after the Fall of Constantinople fell on a Tuesday. It also falls on such an ambiguous location in the week. Thanksgiving is a Thursday; get Wednesday through Friday and the weekend as a neat package. Wednesdays falls in the middle of the week, very motivating: oh-oh, you’re halfway there. But Tuesday? If on a holiday, it’s on its own, and on non-holidays, it’s exponentially worse. No one publicly criticizes Tuesdays. Not enough people talk about Tuesdays. The dreary Tuesdy mornings never get as much sympathy as the so-called “Monday mornings” - Tuesdays don’t start with the letter M, blah blah.

Tuesdays start with a T, just like Thurdays, but Thursdays don’t have that nice tuh-sound ring to it. It’s muted. So people started trying to make Tuesdays the “fun” day. Taco Tuesdays: who likes tacos enough to put it on the same podium as Free Fries Fridays or Wing Wednesdays? And as my rowing coach called it, Tuesday 2ks? The dreaded 2000m, anaerobic cardio test piece that absolutely every rower despised? She thought that was such a nice alliteration, didn’t she?

It was a Tuesday, and my weekend energy back to rock bottom, God still left four whole days for me to suffer through. Every Tuesday started off with a 5:30 AM alarm, and this Tuesday, the ROTC PT workout? A pushup circuit that chewed through my shoulders. Then a 4-hour class that met once a week, a class immediately following that spanned the entire lunch block, a quick nap, meetings and classes, a work shift ending at 10 PM at night. Wednesday problem sets due the next day. I lay in my coffin of a bed at night and could not believe: it was still only Tuesday.

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Prompt from Daily Themes Week 4: Beginnings
Looking back at the themes you’ve written so far this semester, find one whose first sentence you particularly enjoyed writing (and still enjoy reading). Retain only that first sentence, scrap the rest, and, starting with a completely new second sentence, write what feels like a completely new theme. For this new theme, the genre, subject matter, audience, purpose, and occasion are up to you; also up to you is whether to ignore or follow the original prompt.