A calendar for a new world order
The secretary tells me I can go inside now.
I rise stiffly from my chair, banging me head on the Christmas wreath someone foolishly hung on the wall behind my chair.
It never occurred to me that U.S. Senators are so busy.
People clutter the outer office, clutching brief cases and wearing worried looks.
I smile nervously at the child three chairs down from mine.
The child stares at me as if she can read my mind and guess the contents of my own brief case, hating me already for a project that took me 30 years to create.
I stumble over my loose shoe laces, drawing a scornful look from the secretary who takes note of the numerous other pieces of my attire that are in disarray: my hair, my worn tweed suit and my broken eye glasses.
I look at her and at the number of doors behind her desk, confused as to which door I should use.
She gives a stiff jab of her forefinger towards the one marked “Senator.”
I mumble thanks and push through it.
The room beyond the door smells of flowers, although all I can see is a room lined with book shelves and a large desk behind which the blonde-haired senator sits.
He rises to shake my hand, then frowns when I mention my calendar. He tries to look sympathetic when I mention the decades of labor that went into assembling it.
He tells me he has a problem with my moving all of the holidays to the end of each month, even the usually fixed ones such as Christmas, Labor Day and Thanksgiving.
I tell him I simply took an old concept and perfected it.
If we can move holidays to Monday in order to keep people’s noses to the grind stone each week, why not move them to the end of the month so that they don’t get in the way of production at all.
The senator tells me the block of holidays would only make people forget they have to work for a living.
Life if not a lark
The economy requires workers to work, then to spend their money on junk so they have to keep working.
I am stunned.
I tell him the only way I can make any calendar fit that criteria is to get rid of all the holidays altogether.
He grins, pats my shoulder and tells me I got the idea.
I tell him it took me 30 years to create this calendar.
He tells me the new calendar would only require a minor adjustment.
Then as I get ready to leave, he suggests that I might find a way to get rid of weekends as well.
Then he wishes me a Merry Christmas, before he slams the door.