Authentically Adele

The more my children come home and tell me about what they learned, the more I question not what I was taught but how I was taught.

Ariah came home from school and said, “Mummy, I learned the days of the week song. She broke off into a beautiful song with her confident voice, singing:

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
Thursday, Friday, too.
Saturday and Sunday
I’m singing the week with you.

Now I remember Ezra also learned this song when he was in nursery. But it was only today when a memory from my childhood hit me hard. I remembered how I was taught the days of the week. I even
remember the tune. It goes like this.

Solomon Grundy,
born on Monday
Christened on Tuesday
Married on Wednesday
Took ill on Thursday
Got worse on Friday
Died of Saturday
Buried on Sunday
That was the end of Solomon Grundy.

I remember, as a child, feeling so sorry for Solomon Grundy. I had so many questions about his life. Why was it so short? How fast did he grow up? What sickness did he have? Will I catch it, too? Will I also die that fast? I remember thinking how scary life can be, so much that I did not want the first day of the week to start. I remember asking my mother questions about this guy when I was younger. She told me it was just a made-up poem to help kids learn the days of the week. But in my little brain, I couldn’t separate fiction from reality. If the days of the week were real, why wasn’t everything else in the poem real too?

But then, as the days went by, I realized that nothing terrible happened to me on those specific days. I didn’t get married on Wednesday, didn’t get sick on Thursday, and miraculously, I was still alive on Sunday. So, my fear of the Days of the Week song started to fade away.

Today, I wondered if this was like that Christopher Columbus jump rope song, where no one knows where it originated. So, I Googled it and found out that Solomon Grundy is a poem made up by James in 1842 to help people learn the days of the week. Go figure!

I wonder what my children will school me in next.