Today Jimbo woke up with a really bloodshot eye. That first look into the mirror this morning was somewhat of a shock. It wasn’t pretty. As I have said before, Jimbo is somewhat of a less-than-handsome man, anyway, and his reflection in the mirror required one to look deep for inner beauty. Jimbo made an appointment with the eye doctor who told him everything was all right, that he just had some kind of a hemorrhage that would clear up in a while. Waking up with your eye all red makes one think about his mortality, but I stopped worrying about it after seeing the doctor. Thanks, doc. Also, thanks mom for referring me to him and especially thanks to my sister, a nurse, who helped assure me on the phone this morning that what little life I had in me was not quickly ebbing away.
On the way back from the eye doctor, I drove past a building that houses a company for which I used to work. There were no cars in the parking lot and I remembered when I used to work there the union guys out in the shop voted to take the Martin Luther King holiday instead of President’s Day. That was the last place I worked where we got the King holiday off. I remember at the time there was some odd resentment about taking the day off. One of the ladies I worked with said she would rather come to work than have a holiday in honor of Mr. King. Back then, believe it or not, I was kind of the office Joker, always trying to get a laugh (not serious and contemplative as I am today), and my response was that I would be happy to take a holiday, even if it were in honor of Attila the Hun.
I don’t think you would run across many people today who would express the same opinion of my former co-worker and many would say my response lacked a proper amount of political correctness, but I still feel that a day off work is a good thing, even if one doesn’t spend the day off honoring the person for whom the holiday is based. I think the symbolism of the King holiday makes it as legitimate as any other one, despite the fact that many people don’t get off work for it, and many that do probably don’t spend the day thinking about their black heritage. I would even venture that most of the people who are off school and work today are a little light on black heritage. If you think about most of our holidays, people probably only give a little thought to what the holiday is all about, if even that. I had to look up information about Memorial Day on the web to confirm what it actually honors, and it is not the Indianapolis 500.
Of the major holidays, two are in honor of Jesus (Christmas and Easter) and I would venture a guess that even non-Christians take the day off work and celebrate. Four honor America and its traditions. President’s Day honors our two most famous leaders, while Memorial Day honors those who died in war. Independence Day celebrates the declaration from Great Britain; Thanksgiving honors the pilgrims and the day after Thanksgiving honors commercialism and conspicuous consumption. Labor Day honors workers and the labor movement, but how many of us belong to unions these days and who thinks much about laborers at all the barbeques? New Year’s honors a random day of the year when we can start over with a clean slate.
Then, of course, we have the minor holidays for which most of us don’t get off work, unless we take a vacation day. Columbus day honors a lost mariner named Cristobal Colon who had a masterful view of the big picture and of the world being a globe, but he was not detail oriented and bumped into America while thinking he was in the East Indies. April Fool’s Day honors idiocy and gullibility. Halloween honors witchcraft and Satanism. St. Patrick’s Day honors the Irish and the incorrect stereotype that all the Irish are drunkards. However, for one day out of the year we are all Irish, and we drink to excess.
Perhaps someday, the Martin Luther King holiday will be a day when we are all black and we all embellish some incorrect racial stereotype. Until that time, however, I say we should celebrate the day, remember the man and enjoy the day off, if you have it.
Because in Jimbo’s world we can always use a day off.
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