Thursday's Child

Some of you from my generation will remember the nursery rhyme which associates a personal characteristic with the day of the week on which you were born. Remember "Monday's child is fair of face; Tuesday's child is full of grace", etc. It goes on to relate that "Thursday's child has far to go" which is of course somewhat better than Wednesday's child which is "full of woe". Of course, these are just the words of a silly nursery rhyme from the days of my childhood.

Then, I went to elementary and junior high school and learned that if you wore green or purple on Thursdays, you were considered queer. While certainly, those age groups today would associate that with being gay, I am not certain that in the late 1960s and early 1970s in small town, rural Minnesota, my school peers even had a clue what they were talking about. For those of us isolated on our remote farms and small town homes during those days, we mostly thought of "queer" as being strange or unusual. And I almost forgot to mention that if you ate green M & Ms in those days, that would "make you queer". I can only imagine how many green chocolate morsels were simply thrown in the garbage rather than risk making someone queer.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, it seems we did "have far to go" in our understanding of one another and what should be considered true character. If only I had known then what I know now, I might have worn green and purple every Thursday. Do you remember when it was not acceptable for men to wear pastels, especially pink and lavender? Of course, similar to the schools kids of my day, it was considered feminine for adult men to wear "girly" colors. Just based on a handful of individuals whom I saw wearing pink dress shirts this past Easter, I am sure California's governor is beside himself with the number of "girly men" in his midst.

It is very doubtful that every child born on Thursday is faced with major challenges in his or her life. However, what is certain is that the "Thursday's child" mentality or the "wear green or purple on Thursday" childish ridicule of years past remain challenges to all of us in the 21st century. Don't we still make up silly little rules upon which we judge people. We place so many labels upon individuals to describe their lifestyle, which niche within that lifestyle they fit into, body type, the way they dress, what kind of car or truck they drive, where they live, what they do for a living, and on and on the list goes. As a result, if they do not meet our checklist for new people, we are likely to not even speak to them when we encounter them in a social setting.

In retrospect, it would seem that many of us have "Thursday's child" syndrome indeed. Perhaps we have just as "far to go" as the school children of the 1960s and 1970s or our contemporary adults who hold fast to a narrow-minded vision of human life and their fellow residents on the planet. A wise religious teacher once stated that it is "not what goes into a person that makes them unclean" but it is "what comes out of that person's heart." The call for all of us then is to start living from the inside out. With that said, we do have "far to go."

~ DB Turnmire