TGIF & TGISaturday, Sunday, Monday, etc. (u get my point)

Part 1

Eric Trules

Dec 13, 2024

“TGIF!” “TGIF!”

It’s almost an American idiom.

Thank Goodness It’s Friday!

Ever since I was I boy, I’ve heard it.

“TGIF!” “TGIF!”

From the dark green-tiled hallways at Salisbury Elementary School in Westbury, New “Yawk” - on “LonGis’land”. (Accent on the second syllable, of course.)

To the lunchroom and assembly halls at W. Tresper Clarke High School, also in Westbury, New Yawk etc.

I not only heard it amongst us kids ourselves, but also from the “lunch ladies”, the janitors, the crossing-walk guards, and even from the teachers themselves. (Hey, I’m sure Principal Henry Hort thought the same damn thing.)

“TGIF!” “TGIF!”

But why not?

Work hard all week to “bring home the bacon”, to pay the bills. Worry, save, “put it away for college”. How could you NOT look forward to your leisure time, your “down time”, to your, Praise the Lord, “Weekend”? (Long before “The Weekend” became an international rap icon).

Yes, those two days, Saturday and Sunday, were both cherished and loved, no doubt in my mind, by the large majority of Americans and their families, for the entire last part of the 20th century.

Sleep late, no having to get the kids to school on time, brunch instead of breakfast, maybe a little worship, on either of the two days, depending on the Tribe you belong to. Read The Times with Hirschfeld in Section 2, after having maybe… gotten some extra “we don’t talk about this” time with the wife or hubby, also long before “husbands & wives” simply became “partners”, “old men”, “old ladies”, maybe even “hey, babe, let’s take a walk on the wild side”. From probably, the 1960s forward.

Then BAM!

Hear the kids yelling and fighting in the living room over an early Saturday morning card game, “Bongo” aka Double Solitaire, throwing the two decks at each other, running around in comical but violent circles, from the fuzzy, gray-carpeted living room onto the slick, polka dotted linoleum floor of the craftsman-like, perfectly-husband-made, kitchen.

BAM! Again.

Noisily, the enemies crash down the long hallway. The little girl slams the first bedroom door. CRASH! But not until after she has utterly destroyed her big brother’s perfectly-arranged, anal, and immaculate “living space” (room).

BANG! Into her own room, grabbing every stuffed animal she absolutely NEEDS, she slams her own door even harder than Big Bro’s, finally lunging into the bathroom, desperately and noisily, locking the door behind her.

Chillll….dren!!!!! What are you doing? Don’t you know your father and I are trying to get some extra sleep? It’s the weeeeek-end.
Sorry, Ma.

Call me Ishmael.

Ooops, that’s another book I was thinking of writing.

But back to this story. A jump cut - to a decade or so later, just post-college. When I first ventured down that long and winding road to - find myself. Or perhaps in my case, it was a more a… rocking and rebellious roller-coaster ride.

Because, although I left everything I had grown up with as far behind me as I psychically could, in such a late and turbulent cutting of the umbilical cord, I did also cut one other, very important thing….

TGIF.

I was no longer on anyone’s time… other than my own.

No more button-down or please the parents. No more classes or vacations at home. No more med school or Vietnam War claiming my body and soul. (I thank my lucky ghost who pulled Number 297 out of the 365 possible popping balls in the ping-pong machine that determined who would be drafted into the U.S. Armed Forces in the late Vietnamese War-plagued 60s, and - who would not.)

I was far from the only one of my generation who rejected TGIF, 9-5, wake up, eat, commute, go to work, make a living, reverse commute, come home, eat dinner, “relax”, watch tv, go to bed, and… do it again. And then, again. Ad infinitum…

Well, not me. Not anymore. Not the now-liberated, countercultural, artist Trules. Once I cut the cord, I was a freeeee man. Often, an angry and freeeeee man, but passion, hunger, curiosity, and creativity all… forged that single word, “freedom”, into my favorite word in the English language.

BUT wait! How about?

Life is a Cabaret, oh, chum.

That’s what they sang, right? That’s what they all said back in the day. No? At least in the classic, Tony-Ward-winning Broadway musical of the same name.

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But wait again!

No! Life isn’t a “Cabaret”. No, not at allll. For me…. life is… an improvisation.

Or so it seems. “Improvised” = Unplanned. Spontaneous. In the moment. “Be here now.” Just like the word intends it to be. “Improvisation”, taking shape by accident, incident, and instinct.

For me, it was never “who I knew”, but rather “who I met, who I bumped into, and where the road led me”. That’s how I began all my careers: modern dancer, professional clown, documentary filmmaker, poet, solo performer, university professor, husband, father… not one did I ever plan for, or even… possibly imagine.

Sure, I’ve worked jobs that had dates and times where I had to be punctual. But I don’t think I ever had any two days in a row that were the same. Maybe weeks repeated themselves, then semesters, then decades…

But what I always liked, what I still like, and what I’d like to acknowledge, is that I believe I’ve had, that is ever since Cord Cutting Day, a truly improvised and creative life. One - off the TGIF grid.

Once, on my improvised 1970 road trip around America in my 1964 Pontiac Tempest named “Wolfie”, I had my Tarot cards read by a seemingly legit woman in Peach Tree Park in Atlanta. I vividly recall how green the grass was, how blue the sky, and how my “spiritual reader” wore a long black, flouncing skirt (of course). I also remember how… after she did her ornate hocus pocus, arranging the cards, with me having given her all my personal information… she had me draw just… a single card.

Pressure.

I draw the card….

Oh my God, Witch Peachtree croaks.
What? What is it? I say, feeling like a death sentence is surely coming my way.
It’s The Upside Down Fool! OMG!
Is that baaaaad? I whisper.

She looks at me and then - her eyes dart - to either the sky, the trees, or who knows, maybe at her invisible cronies surrounding us.

She say, Wellllllll….. not….. exactly.

From there, as if possessed, she goes into her high-end Tarot reading and interpretation trance. I listen carefully to her every word and I… don’t understand a thing.

‘Til this day.

I just got the impression, that if nothing else, to be born “The Upside-Down Fool” is not/was not… the greatest thing in the world.

C’mon, just think about it. Say you were born a right-side-up Fool? That would be bad enough, right? Still, I mean ok, I could take that. I was, in fact, a professional fool (clown) for a good decade of my life. (See previous post.) Even though I didn’t know I would be at 22 years old in Peach Tree Park in 1970, in Atlanta, Georgia.

But upside-down? There’s… the rub. The wicked curve ball. I mean, what’s with that? Upside-DOWN? The Upside-DOWN Fool!

It sounds only half as grim as THE GALLOWS or THE HANGMAN, the most “challenging” cards in the Tarot deck.

Unless… wait… that’s exactly what made me…. such a cantankerous and mischievous clown. And makes me now… such an iconoclastic grown-ass man!

The Upside-Down Fool!

Maybe that’s why I don’t like laws, rules, authority, or listening to others’ ideas when they’re different from mine. Maybe that’s why I don’t like convention and conformity. Stop signs and yellow lines. Maybe that’s why I always identify with the outlaw, the loner cowboy… Dylan’s quote:

To live outside the law you must be honest.

Yeahhhhh, maybe that’s my true identity, the Upside-Down Fool?

But hey, now it’s Christmas time here in Santa Fe. Beautifully, golden-lit Southwestern Santa Fe.

Time to take another Walkabout around the town. Whether it’s a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday… you get my point!

Upside down or not… TGIF be damned.

TBC (To Be Continued ) - in Part 2

HAPPY HOLIDAYS,

Upside-Down Trules

TGIF & TGISaturday, Sunday, Monday, etc. (u get my point)

Part 1

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