Do you ever feel . . . tired?  Achy?  Worn out?  You’re not alone.  Millions of Americans just like you have felt this way for a long time.  These same folks have held fast to the customary calendrical monotony for far too long, and it is time I said my piece.

We should have a three-day weekend.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  Who is this guy?  Can he do this?  This is crazy!  Is he for real?  What a wild idea!  Unbelievable!  I totally get where you’re coming from.  I’m something of a rebel when it comes to the days of the week, but please, allow me to continue.

Too many Americans are bogged down and bedraggled by the constant toiling in the metaphorical fields, and in working endlessly, they lose their creative initiative.  How could they possibly be expected to overachieve when they can hardly handle achieving?  Between the quotidian grind of housework, school work, and maintaining a social life while not becoming completely and utterly deprived of all sleep and sustenance, it is exceptionally challenging for people to grow and evolve as individuals.

According to a recent survey conducted by the organization Statistics That Won’t Lie To You, We Promise, exactly one hundred percent of adults in the United States feel they are overworked.  This is a staggering, almost unbelievable percentage.  If we had Fridays off, this would provide just the morale boost that workers desperately crave.  Sure, in losing the fifth work day, we subject ourselves to some minor pitfalls such as a complete lack of production in all labor markets for twenty percent of the work week.  However, once rejuvenated by a third day of rest and relaxation, citizens would be able to come to work re-energized and more productive than ever, thus compensating for the aforementioned loss.  In addition, this would provide the bonus of allowing individuals the flexibility and free time to explore and discover their passions, whereas now they are often too busy and overloaded to do so.

Children in particular will undoubtedly reap a positive outcome from my proposed amendment to the calendar.  No more will little Jimmy be forced to skip another critical Friday afternoon soccer practice because his dad has to work late.  No more will little Susie be left behind on another mother-daughter brunch extravaganza.  No more will slightly-overweight-but-still-cute-in-a-young-Kevin-James-kind-of-way Frankie be subjected to the horror of missing that oh-so-important fourth meal right between lunch and dinner.  With this radical adjustment to the work week, parents everywhere will be able to devote even more time to their kids.  Unfortunately, Dad won’t be able to pretend to be at work when he’s out having a couple drinks “just to take the edge off” on Fridays anymore, but that’s a sacrifice he must be willing to make for the preservation of America.

According to another organization, We Can’t Believe You’re Still Listening To Us, teen dropout rates are skyrocketing, with the number one cause being homework-related negligence.  The media and a variety of falsified propaganda would lead people to believe that these kinds of poor decisions are being made due to broken homes, drug and alcohol addictions, and other absurd notions along these lines.  These are all lies.  It’s all about the homework.  If adolescents were given the opportunity to have that day of cushion built into their schedules, they would therefore be able to finish and turn in their homework, acquire passing grades, stay in school, and pursue worthwhile and wholesome endeavors.  This would drastically lower crime rates nationwide, saving millions of dollars annually on prisoner maintenance and housing.

The one major drawback to this idea is admittedly significant.  Extending the weekend would seriously hinder big business’ valiant attempts to transform all humans into labor robots.  Corporations have long been growing and cultivating a mass of work slaves devoid of any glimmer of free will, which is ideal for the level of production that they hope to attain.  Arrive early?  Can do!  Stay late?  Sure boss!  Neglect my family in favor of my job?  You bet!  Conform to each and every company-mandated policy that comes flinging my way?  Count on it!  An extension to the weekend would come as quite a shock to the well-oiled machine known as corporate America.

And so I ask corporate America, and Americans in general, to think of your fellow citizens, and consider their needs as individuals rather than what they can offer to the big picture as cogs in the machine.  We are people who feel emotion, and have desires to live life, and experience the gnawing necessities of our physiological makeup.  Yes, some would suggest that in order to further ourselves as a group, we should all just keep working until we drop.  Darwinist theory tells us that the strongest would prevail, and that’s how it should be.  However at a certain point, we as a society begin to receive diminishing returns from this tactic, finding that instead of advancing as a civilization, we’re simply maintaining an efficient economy at the expense of real, flesh and blood human beings.  Lives matter more than figures and statistics.  Little Jimmy and Susie (and even Frankie) matter.  The sanity of academically-pressured youth matters.  We’re not cogs - we’re people.  People matter.