Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine ( the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers )
There was a time when Saturday was the best day of the weekend…no, make that the best day of the whole week. Saturday was a day off from school and work and, unlike the other weekend day…Sunday, there were no specified and/or required activities. Now that did not mean there was nothing to do! Saturday was a day filled with chores, tasks, projects, lunch without napkins, using the bathroom (indoors or out) without asking permission…in other words a busy day, but in a way that you hoped (your) adult life would be when you grew up. Looking back, there was an odd…symmetry, orderliness…something about the Saturdays I remember, that I would love to have back.
…the day always started in front of the TV. And it was not ‘today’s weather is brought to you by…” or “today’s Top Scary Story…” (hell! in those days there were no news shows on until Sunday morning!)
Saturday mornings were all about the cartoons! And maybe some live action shows mixed in as we got older…and there was always, without fail, TV-time spent with a very famous trio… the Stooges! and not the ones with Shep…(those episodes were somehow too …organized, logical or something that tried to have the stories make sense…which to a 5 year old is so unnecessary!)
Breakfast on the couch or the living room floor… ( that was the right way to start the weekend! )
Later in the morning, once the adults were up… there were almost always chores assigned to family members, but even these required tasks were nothing like the rigid, regimented ‘task-specific hour followed by task-specific hour’ of the weekdays.
Saturdays were fun.
This Post is not about the non-work, non-school free activity of Saturdays. It is more about the ‘centering of the day’ that my memory of Saturday seems to hold. The Saturdays that I remember, while (mostly) un-structured and generally without a rigid schedule always contained a definite focal point. (And this is where things get odd). When I look back on my memories of Saturdays, it seems that the focal point of the day, all the daytime activities were, somehow, centered on my parents ‘going out for the evening’.
This is odd, if for no other reason than the fact that my parents ‘went out for the evening’ maybe 2 or 3 times in the entire year. But that is where my memory of Saturday takes me. That and ‘stopping by the dry cleaners’. Now that we all live in the advanced and evolved future that is the 21st Century we can be grateful that langauge has advanced to include an expression that is perfect for this point in today’s Post…WTF?
Seriously! Why should I have ‘stopping at the dry cleaners’ as the primary childhood memory artifact in my brain right now? And…and it’s not just me!
Stop reading…go to ‘the google’ and in the search box type in ‘Saturday Chores’ and then search ‘Images’
See what I mean? …sure there are a lot of different images, lots of mowing lawn photos and raking leaves but count the photos of dry cleaners! And all the cute photos of Post-it notes on the refrigerator…. what item is on all those Post-it notes?… (yeah, I know it is a little creepy…they are so messing with our minds).
But that is what I have for childhood memories of Saturdays. A day where life is not a test…where what we do is not being graded…a day that does not have to be assessed in terms of ‘did I get everything I wanted to do done”?
And this is about the Wakefield Doctrine, how?
lol
…when I started writing this Post, ‘the Point’ was going to be about how you should call in tonight to the Saturday Night Drive Live Blog Post show… (the secret phone number is here somewhere, or just write us a Comment or ask one of the others… DS#1 or Molly or if you have the nerve… Ms AKH.)
But as often happens, the topic changes on it’s own somehow by the time I get down here at the end of the Post.
Now I am thinking what does the imaginary Saturday depicted above tell us about the Wakefield Doctrine’s use today, right now…in our lives? (Quick bullets points…)
To get the most out of today/Saturday:
- let the scott out to play
- look to your clarklike aspect, to think of things to do
- know that you have a rogerian side to your personality and that is this part of you that will get the chores done and enjoy doing them
- send the clark-part of your personality to keep an eye on your scottian side…clarks know how scotts think and scotts know that they do and will listen to a clark so more than to a roger
- …there is a Three Stooges show on somewhere…find it…watch it… let them start your day off the right way
About clarkscottroger
…(tap, tap, tap is this thing on?) Ahem, I left a coupla comments at this, the most recent post, yesterday when it, er, looked a little different. At some point early on they (my comments) went away, as did the lead pic and the video. “And?” Nothing really, because the content did not change and the content is what it’s about.
So-o-o- I called into the Doctrine Saturday Night Show last night.. When I called in FOTD Molly of Journey fame (no not that Journey) had been speaking of her knitting. Whoah Nelly! I can jump in on that one, knitting being part of my dilitanttric past (no Glenn, not that!) and all. The conversational thread came loose however and consequently we did not fully explore a clark’s propensity for “not finishing” (insert whatever you like right here). Our host and Progenitor clark referred to it as “holding back”.
In my case it (my knitting) was the almost but not quite completion of a sweater and baby blanket. The sweater is safely packed away with the baby blanket for oh, I don’t know, a combined 25 years. But hey! I can still finish them. Really! I will! I just need to (again, fill in the blank clarks)
So what is that all about? Why do clarks more often than not, not complete a project like our rogerian brethren?
Dear Anonymous,
Thank you for your kind thought…no that timeline no longer exists…the vagaries of a search for power…
…the key phrase (for purposes of maximum value from the Doctrine) is the phrase ‘holding back’ unless someone would say that that (particular) phrase/expression was inappropriate. This is not to be capricious or arbitrary…submit an alternate phrase…see how it fits
LOL-I think it would be highly appropriate to present the now-25 yr. old baby with the sweater and blanket, preferrably in a ritualistic setting. This could go on for hundreds of years, and someday some future baby might actually wear the items that will be rumored to have begun with Martha Washington. An endurban legend.
And remember, kids- just because rogers start lots of stuff, it doesn’t mean that they finish it. I myself will be leaving several acres of junk for future babies to contend with. What kid wouldn’t want an old Marshall amp, a shed full of indecipherable garden tools, and a Westinghouse console radio from the early forties? ( the radio works, but the 78-rpm doesn’t. Yet. I’m getting to that.) And if you act now, I’ll throw in the beautiful old high-end Denon cd player I found at Sal’s. With remote, manual, and the damned box it came in from 1987. Does everything but play, but I hear that Thomas Jefferson’ s descendants found a box of old laser caps in the attic at Monticello, and they’re putting them up on Ebay. along with several half-knit baby blankets…looks like old Tom had a lot more kids than he ever admitted to…apparently they all grew up and moved to Osaka, hence the Denon connection. It’s all true, I swear on the family Bible with the broken binding… oh right, I’m getting to that too.
…lol (also) I can picture the scene: ( Monticello around midnight… Thomas J and Sally sitting around smoking they damn haids off…packing away artifacts),… “Sally!…Sally!! Sally check it out!! gonna draw some eyeballs on the money and put Ben Franklins name on it… bury it in the cellar…Let that sanctimonious fucker explain that!!”