Debate: Which Day is the Start of the Week?

By Jake and Glenn

Hello debate fans. Welcome to another installment of our debate series on One Year in Texas, a website named after our deceased friend Arthur Texas. This week’s debate is about which day begins the week. Monday and Sunday enter the exploding barbed wire cage and won’t come out until one of them is dead and completely removed from the calendar. Grab your popcorn, Mountain Dew and novelty, over-sized foam finger that indicates that you think something written across it is “number one” and strap your ass to your chair for this wild ride.


Jake: I chose this particular debate topic because I recently got into an argument with my wife over which day is the end/start of the week. I argued that Sunday is the end of the week because it’s the end of the weekend. Monday is the beginning of the week. We start work on Monday. Mail comes again on Monday. Our favorite shows (Monday Night Football, The Warzone, WCW Nitro, Herman’s Head) are on Mondays. Sunday is a day of rest. It is like a whisper in our ears straight from the lips of God. Garfield hates nothing more than a Monday, perhaps spiders. If Garfield hates it, then it has to be the beginning of something, be it the week or an arachnid home invasion.


Glenn: You are wrong about everything in this debate, except the continued popularity of the show “Herman’s Head” on FOX’s wonderful Sunday night line-up. Readers, put down your “Fuck Mondays” coffee mug and go over to the wall. You see that Playgirl calendar hanging there, with a hunky model’s penis hanging there over the month of September? The weeks of this month begin with a Sunday, not Monday. Do you refuse to believe your own eyes? The only calendar I have ever seen whose weeks began with a Monday were of Latin American descent or promo gifts from opening a savings account with the Church of Satan Community Bank. Sunday is a day of rest, at the beginning of the week, to prepare for the last six days of the upcoming week - the last week of your life.


Jake Oh, you’re playing the calendar card immediately. Your lack of subtlety is reminiscent of The Pope. Calendars are man made objects, much like time, dates and money. I’ll still put my money on Monday being the date the week starts every time. Do you start school on a Sunday? Hell no! If you did then you wouldn’t be able to go to church to fellate the priest. I don’t want to live in a world that would put a day at the end of the weekend as the beginning of the week. It is less logical than an MC Escher painting. Monday is the beginning of the week and there is no argument that will prove otherwise.


Glenn: I have already proven it otherwise by evoking the most sacred document of all: the calendar. Of course dates, weeks and prejudice are created by humans and therefore not “real” like those things god created: the earth, trees, volcanoes, a watch, etc. But that doesn’t mean we still can’t live our life by them. Even though technically Sunday is part of the weekend I do not wake up feeling liberated and excited about “going clubbing” later in the evening. I wake up the same way I have since I was ten years old: with my mother spraying water in my face and telling me we are going to be late for church. Sunday night is my best example for how Sunday is truly the beginning of the week. When someone finally messages you after months of lurking on Match.com and asks if you want to go out this weekend, they do not mean Sunday night. They mean Friday or Saturday. If someone asked me that and tried to make plans for Sunday night, I would be so offended that I would ask to split the dinner instead of doing the right thing by treating.


Jake: While Glenn has finally admitted to being abused by his mother, he has also admitted to thinking Sunday is the start of the week. How are we supposed to know if he’s telling the truth about the former, when he is clearly lying about the latter. We now know that Glenn is a liar and a cheap, cheap man, we also know that he is mentally insane due to his weekend opinions. Sure, going out on a date is not traditionally a Sunday event, but that is not what a weekend makes, my friend. I will ignore the fact that I have gone on dates on Sundays. I will even ignore that I have gone on dates on a god damned Wednesday! Is Wednesday a part of the weekend? No. It’s the hump day! Weekend means end of the week. I know that I keep stressing this point, but it really is the only point worth stressing in this debate (barring that you are dating Glenn): Sunday is the end of the weekend. We all can agree that Sunday is part of the weekend. Nobody with internet access and a clean bill of mental health would argue otherwise. Garfield hates Mondays. I hate Garfield. Therefore I love Mondays. Monday is the beginning of the week.

Glenn:  Fuck Monday!  And, for that matter, fuck Sunday!  I apologize for swearing in this debate.  It is the first time I have ever, but you’ve really got me riled up.  I tried to use a theoretical example of going on a date with someone and then you proceed to humiliate me by implicitly stating that I will not be dating on a weekend or weekday.  We all know this, just like we all know the week begins on Sunday.  Wednesday, since you mentioned it, is called “hump day” because it’s the fourth day of a seven day week and thus the day where you get over the hump of the week.  It is also the day, statistically, that Bobby Brown’s “Humpin’ Around” is played most often on Spotify.  These are statistics.  Speaking of music, U2’s song “Sunday Bloody Sunday” about a woman’s first menstruation includes the line “I can’t believe the news today / today the first day of the week.”  There is so much Bono has been wrong about, but let’s support him this one time when he’s right.  I hope everyone has a good weekend comprised of Friday and Saturday.