These Are, Yes, the Mondays That Make Life Worth Living

Mondays are never supposed to be fun days. After hearty partying all weekend, theoretically, adults have to go back to work and students have to go back to school. Singers have sung about “Stormy Monday” and about “Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day.”

Personally, the only Monday I had much use for was Rick.

Until now.

Monday is making a comeback. Monday might even wipe the traditional weekend right off my Christie Brinkley calendar from now on.

Come on, somebody, sing something nice about Monday for a change. Take somebody out for Monday brunch. Tell an NBC programmer to give “Monday Night Live” some thought. Go up to somebody in your office next week and say: “Thank God it’s Monday.”

For a manly man like myself, a beer-drinkin’, tobacco-spittin’, gusto-grabbin’ guy, Monday used to be a drag.

First of all, I never went to work during the daytime because--and you may find this difficult to believe--there were surprisingly few professional basketball and college football games played on Monday afternoons. It was even hard to find some women’s tennis tournament where Martina Navratilova was winning a first-round match, 6-0, 6-0, from some 723rd-ranked girl with pigtails and zits.

At home, meanwhile, no matter how many TV channels I changed during daylight hours, I couldn’t find a game. All I could find was some soap opera where some tramp named Erica was recovering from amnesia, or a re-run of Lucy and Ricky going to a nightclub with Fred and Ethel, or a game show where Monty Hall was talking to somebody from the audience who was dressed as a carrot.

At least the later hours some Mondays would offer some football. Better still, after I moved to California, I discovered that on the West Coast, ABC-TV’s “Monday Night Football” game began when the sun was still up. It began so early, Peter Jennings still hadn’t had a chance to report what Sam Donaldson had shouted at Ronald Reagan that day. Out here, it was more like “Monday Dusk Football.”

That got me through some rough months, I must admit. If there hadn’t been some football to watch, I probably would have spent Mondays doing frivolous things, like trying to lose weight, or reading a book. Imagine my wasting a perfectly good evening that way when I could have been watching a football game while eating a very large bowl of greasy potato chips.

Well, I was pretty nervous about springtime coming around, because Mondays would go back to being every bit as boring as I remembered them.

But what did I find myself doing on Monday of this week? I found myself attending a thrill-packed, chill-packed college basketball game between Indiana and Syracuse that settled the national championship, a game so good that I didn’t even mind missing the Oscars. The academy people were really ticked off at Woody and Paul and me, standing them up like that.

I am not exactly sure when or why the rocket scientists who run college basketball decided to hold the biggest game of the year on a Monday. College teams rarely play on Monday all season, save a few hundred regular season basketball games, but every championship game seems to be scheduled for that night, and usually the very same night as the Oscars.

On March 29, 1976, after Elliott Gould and Isabelle Adjani had announced the nominees for the Oscar in film editing, Gould opened the envelope and said, “And the winners are . . . Indiana, 86-68.”

The real winner was “Jaws,” by the way.

It is typical of the nonsense of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. that the student-athletes representing their schools in the national championship game are obliged to play the game on a school night.

But, at least it makes Monday a fun day for all of us jock junkies. Which brings me, at last, to next Monday.

Think it’s going to be just another crummy weekday? Think again.

For one thing, the baseball season opens Monday. Not Friday. Not Saturday. Not Sunday. Monday.

Think your kid is really going to class that day? No way.

Think your wife is really going to be home waiting for the plumber? Ha! She’s going to be at the stadium--probably with the plumber.

Think your partner is coming back to the office after lunch? Yeah, sure. Around 4:45 p.m., maybe, with a beer-stained shirt and a pocketful of peanut shells.

Furthermore, next Monday also is the day for the big scrap in the Caesars Palace parking lot between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Myopic Ray Leonard.

Yes, friends, it’s finally fight time. Time for the referee to give his instructions: “No rabbit punches, no kidney punches, no retina punches, now let’s have a good clean fight.”

If that isn’t enough, many of the world’s greatest golfers will be arriving in Augusta, Ga., on Monday for the start of Masters week.

I have no idea who is going to win the tournament this year, but I do know this: I don’t care if Jack Nicklaus has won $99.95 on the tour so far this year, and I don’t care if he shoots 87 and gets bitten by a snake on the first day, I won’t call him washed up.

All in all, it should be a pretty wonderful Monday, and I am looking forward to it. If only I could personally attend one of these three big events. Unfortunately, I have a prior commitment Monday night, playing the clarinet.