Why Friday is better

Hello.

Remember me?

I'm the guy who used to have a column in this spot every Friday but tried to be a Sunday columnist.

It didn't work.

It's hard to explain why I didn't like being a Sunday columnist. If I'm honest, I'll admit I'm a two-bit writer who has no business being in a Sunday newspaper that costs a dollar and a half.

But there are other reasons.

For example, I don't like opening the Friday paper to Page 2A and not seeing my column. And it was a surprise to look at the Sunday paper and read a column by this fellow who looked like me and had the same name -- but wrote stuff that was ... well, way too stuffy.

Maybe that's because Sundays are special days. Sundays are for writers like Norman Vincent Peale and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. You know: positive, uplifting, optimistic.

Anyone who has read my columns long enough knows I'm basically a whiner (fruitcakes, tomatoes, cinnamon rolls, pecan pralines), a liar (World Famous Downtown Golf Course, see-through floodwall, craft mall and funnel cakes on the old bridge) and an exaggerator (million uses for duct tape, million reasons Hizzoner is wrong, million ways to improve downtown).

Don't you see? Upstanding folks on their way to the church of their choice don't want to be bothered with a bunch of cranky stuff while they're eating their Sunday muffins. And I'm not talking about the Sunday-school lesson.

But on Fridays -- heck, on Fridays you can get away with just about anything in a column. I ought to know. I've been doing it long enough.

OK, I'll be the first to admit that switching back to Fridays after a three-week trial in the Sunday slot is a mite hasty. But I've stopped doing a lot of things quicker than that.

It didn't take three trips to a sushi bar for me to get it through my thick skull that if I'm going to eat a dead fish, I want it to taste like fried batter.

(See? You can't make a big deal about eating dead fish on Sundays. It just wouldn't be right.)

And it didn't take more than once to learn not to use my trusty hatchet -- the one with the broken handle all wrapped up in (what else?) duct tape -- to shorten my garden hose. I have the scars to remind me that I have no eye-hand coordination.

And it only took one baking mishap to figure out that blackberries and green tomatoes -- while abundant at the same time -- aren't necessarily a good cobbler combination.

So I think it's perfectly justifiable to jump back to Fridays after three weeks, even if it just goes to prove I'm as wishy-washy as you thought.

But the main reason I've switched back to Fridays is because reading my column on Sundays made me queasy.

The best way I can explain this fluttery-stomach-and-sweaty-palms condition is like this: You know what it's like to get dressed in the dark and accidentally put on the underwear you washed with the red sweatshirt, but you don't realize what you've done until you stop by the men's room halfway through the morning?

Nobody knows you're wearing pink underwear, but those BVDs are suddenly and intolerably uncomfortable.

And then you remember you have your annual physical scheduled that afternoon.

That sensation right there -- that's the one I had about the Sunday column.

Besides, I wouldn't have felt right -- and neither would you -- discussing my underwear on the Lord's day. This old world has enough problems without making you form mental pictures of me in my Skivvies.

Except on Fridays ... .

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.