OK SO. Before anyone @s me in the comments — yes I know I have been working on this entry for five whole weekends and yes I know my roommate Brennan keeps asking me when I am going to “get over it” and NO Brennan, “getting over” a Tuesday is not the same as getting over an ex, that is a category error and I will explain that to you AGAIN if I have to. I will explain it on a WHITEBOARD if I have to.
This is a field guide entry. It is not a journal entry. There is a DIFFERENCE. A journal entry is “today I felt sad and ate a string cheese.” A field guide entry is SCIENCE, or at least it is honestly trying to be, and yes I know I am not a biologist, you do not have to be a biologist to notice things, in fact arguably biologists are the worst at noticing things because they are too busy being credentialed.
The species this hour: Tuesday, October 6th, 1998. Pacific Time. Specifically the one that started at 12:00 AM in our living room with the popcorn ceiling, and ended at 11:59 PM in the same living room, after which an entirely different animal (Wednesday, October 7) replaced it without so much as a note left behind.
People always say “oh, all Tuesdays are the same” and I am SORRY but that is the kind of thing people say when they have never paid attention to a single Tuesday in their lives. Tuesdays are NOT interchangeable. October 6, 1998 had specific weather, specific noises, a specific dog barking out front, and a specific number of times my sister yelled the word “FINE” from the upstairs bathroom. It was FOUR. I counted. I have NOTES. I have notes ON the notes.
I made this chart myself. I know the formatting is wonky, BlogPad keeps doing weird stuff with my tables and I have emailed them about it twice and they have not responded. Anyway.
| Kingdom | Tempora (Time) |
|---|---|
| Phylum | Hebdomadalia (Weekdays of the conventional Gregorian week) |
| Order | Martis (Tuesdays, second-most-overlooked weekday — see footnote 1, do not skip the footnote) |
| Family | Octobrina (October Tuesdays, autumnal subfamily, mild) |
| Genus | Nonagintaocto (the ’98 cohort, of which there were 52, all dead) |
| Species | N. sextus (Tuesday, Oct 6 — the only one ever) |
| Common name | “that one good Tuesday” |
| Local name | “the day Mrs. Iverson’s sprinkler exploded” — informal, used only on our block |
| Status | EXTINCT (since 11:59:59 PM PST, same day) |
| Holotype | my memory, plus a juice pouch I taped into the back of my planner |
And BEFORE someone goes “extinct isn’t the right word, days don’t go extinct,” let me just stop you there because yes they do, a day happens exactly once and then never again and if that is not extinction what would you even CALL it? I am asking a real question. I welcome better terminology. I will not, however, accept “the past.” “The past” is what TV-show grandfathers say when they do not want to talk about a feeling.
RANGE: Approximately one (1) split-level house in the Cedarbrook neighborhood, plus the route to Westview Junior High via Maple Glen Park, plus the grocery on 174th, plus the gravel cut-through behind the dentist’s office because the school bus driver hated me that semester and I had to walk part of the way. (He KNEW he hated me. He never made eye contact. Tell me that’s not a stance.)
HABITAT: The Tuesday in question occurred mainly indoors during the morning hours (low ceilings, beige carpet, an aggressive smell of cinnamon toaster-pastry because my brother burned one in the toaster and then DENIED IT for the rest of the day), shifted outdoor between 7:43 AM and 2:51 PM (school grounds, sky a kind of thin blue, the way blue gets in early October when it’s not committing to anything), and finished indoors again, with a brief stint on the front porch at dusk while I waited for my dad to get home from his shift at the print shop.
6:12 AM — woke up to the bathroom fan, which has had the same rattle since 1994. Was conscious for approximately 9 seconds before remembering it was Tuesday and groaning loud enough that my cat Mort jumped off the bed. Mort took this PERSONALLY for the rest of the day, I will note.
6:31 AM — kitchen. Cinnamon toaster-pastry incident (see above). Mom blamed me first which RUDE, the perpetrator was clearly my brother and the evidence was on his FACE.
7:02 AM — bus stop at the corner of Larch and 168th. Dewy. Smelled like wet asphalt and somebody’s fireplace. The Carlson kid was already there and pretended not to see me, which is fine, that is between him and his god.
7:43 AM — arrival at Westview, locker #214, jammed as usual, had to do the hip-bump. The hip-bump was a TECHNIQUE I developed. I could write a separate entry on it, I bet I will.
8:15 AM — homeroom. Mr. Petti was wearing the green tie with the duck on it which means he was in a good mood, which DOES count as part of the habitat. Anyone who says “teachers’ ties don’t count as ecology” is not paying attention.
10:40 AM — P.E. We did the Pacer test which I am sorry but is a war crime, please look it up, the BEEPS, the relentless BEEPS, the way the gym smelled, the polished floor squeaking like it was telling on you.
12:14 PM — lunch. Tray of mashed potatoes with the little plastic cup of gravy that does NOT contain enough gravy for the volume of potato provided. Cafeteria-wide problem. Generational problem.
2:51 PM — back home. The dog two doors down (Buster, a Bernese, very pleasant) was barking at something invisible. Buster barked at invisible things on Tuesdays a statistically significant amount more often than other days. I tracked this for a month. I have GRAPHS. They are on graph paper, in pencil, because I have integrity.
5:47 PM — the sprinkler. THE SPRINKLER. (See Section V. Please. Please read Section V.)
9:02 PM — homework, half-finished. Juice pouch. Algebra. The kind of algebra that makes you feel like the letters are doing this on purpose.
10:30 PM — bed. The hallway light bulb was making that sizzling sound which my mom kept saying was “fine.” It was not fine. Three weeks later it died in the middle of a thunderstorm and I would like an apology, retroactively, from my mother.
Every Tuesday looks more or less the same from a distance — that is why people DISMISS them, and I think that is frankly lazy. Up close, October 6, 1998 had a whole suite of identifying features that distinguish it from every other Tuesday in the same family. Allow me. Please. ALLOW me.
To anyone about to comment “those are just clouds”: they were CONTRAILS, there is a difference, learn it, I am not above linking to a textbook excerpt I scanned at the library.
You cannot really do a field guide without sounds. I tried to render the Tuesday’s calls phonetically. They are not flattering but they are accurate, which matters more, fight me:
| Dawn call | “krrrr-tikk-tikk-tikk” (bathroom fan rattle, sustained, ~18 minutes) |
|---|---|
| Breakfast warning | “WHO BURNED — WHO DID THIS” (maternal, 6:33 AM, projectile) |
| Hallway alert | “FINE.” × 4, ascending in pitch (sister, upstairs, see Section IX) |
| Mid-morning | “PACER pacer pacer pacer beep” (gymnasium, prolonged, possibly weaponized) |
| Afternoon | “woof-woof-woof-(pause)-woof” (Buster, signature pattern, copyrightable) |
| Dusk call | “PSSSSSSSSSS-cluck-cluck-cluck-PSSSSSSS” (Iverson sprinkler, terminal) |
| Twilight | “bzzzzz-tk-tk-bzzzzz” (hallway bulb, in denial of own mortality) |
I tried to record some of these with my dad’s tape recorder but the batteries were almost out so it just sounds like everyone is speaking through a kazoo full of mashed potatoes. I am not going to upload it. Do not ask. (╯°-°)╯
This is the part where in a real field guide they would say “this species is diurnal and feeds primarily on insects” or whatever. October 6, 1998 was diurnal (it had a sun) and fed primarily on itself, in that it spent the day building up to one specific incident and then dissolving into evening like a sugar cube doing a swan dive.
The incident, for the record, since multiple people including but NOT limited to my own brother have started to mythologize it incorrectly:
Mrs. Iverson’s sprinkler had been making noises for SIX MONTHS. Everyone on Cedarbrook Lane knew. My dad had said “that thing is going to go” three separate times — once at a barbecue, once over the fence, once just walking past it muttering to himself, I HEARD HIM. Document this. Put it in a book.
At approximately 5:47 PM, while I was waiting on the porch, the brass coupling at the base of the sprinkler — which had been corroding since possibly the Reagan administration — let go. The sprinkler did not so much explode as express itself. There was a sustained sound like a kettle and a horse trying to compete in a talent show. A column of water went up about twelve feet and stayed up for what felt like a full minute, though my dad later said it was more like fifteen seconds and my dad is not always to be trusted on this kind of thing.
The neighborhood gathered. Mrs. Iverson came out in her green house slippers. Buster, two doors down, lost his entire mind. My mom said “oh my GOD” in a voice I had not heard before and have not heard since, and I would like the linguistic community to please come collect this datum. It was, and I will defend this to my last breath, the most BEAUTIFUL thing I saw in 1998 and POSSIBLY in the entire decade and I AM including a vacation we took to the coast.
People who were not there sometimes say things like “it was just a broken sprinkler.” I am sorry but if you think it was “just a broken sprinkler” then I do not know what to tell you, I really do not, you and I are operating on completely different definitions of the word just.
@me if you want, I have the counter going. It will keep going. It will outlive me. It will outlive Brennan, who frankly DESERVES for this counter to outlive him.
The Tuesday consumed:
Yes I am aware that “diet” is supposed to refer to what the species eats, not what eats the species. I am USING IT METAPHORICALLY. This is allowed. I am the field guide author. I make the rules. If you do not like the rules you can start your own field guide and we can have a CIVIL conversation about competing methodologies but I will not be talked OUT of this one.
People — and I include otherwise-intelligent people in this — frequently misidentify October 6, 1998 as one of the following adjacent Tuesdays:
| Sept 29, 1998 | The previous Tuesday. Sometimes mistaken for Oct 6 because Buster was also barking that day. KEY DIFFERENCE: no sprinkler incident, also my mom was wearing the blue sweatshirt not the gray one. ALSO different lunch (chicken patty day, not potato day, COMPLETELY different family of Tuesday). |
|---|---|
| Oct 13, 1998 | The following Tuesday. Almost identical lunch tray. KEY DIFFERENCE: the brownie did NOT have crystallized sugar on top. It was a regular brownie. A NORMAL brownie. A Tuesday-brownie of unremarkable lineage. Do not let people tell you these are the same Tuesday. |
| Oct 6, 1992 | Six years prior, also a Tuesday. I was six and do not remember it but I am including it for completeness, possibly an ancestor species, possibly the start of the line entirely. |
| “That Tuesday in October, you know the one” | NO. I do not know the one. There were FOUR Tuesdays in October 1998 and they were ALL DIFFERENT. Specify or take it outside. |
EXTINCT, as previously established. There is exactly zero (0) habitat remaining for October 6, 1998. The location is now occupied by sequential Wednesdays, none of which have shown any interest in preserving the cultural memory of their predecessor. Typical. Wednesdays.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Look. I KNOW how this sounds. I am 22 years old and I have spent five weekends in 2003 writing a field guide entry about a single day in 1998 and that is, by certain metrics, a lot. Brennan says it is “a lot.” My sister, who shouted FINE four times that day, says it is “actually really sweet” but she is biased because she is in it.
Here is the thing though. (Here is the thing, here is the thing, here is the THING.) Nobody is doing this. Nobody is paying attention to the days that are not holidays or were not on the news. The internet is full of summaries — top-ten lists, year-in-review, “the 90s in 60 seconds” — and not a SINGLE one of those summaries mentions October 6, 1998, and that is because nobody who makes those summaries was sitting on my porch that evening when the sprinkler went up.
So if I have to be the one. Fine. I will be the one. I will be the field guide for one day in 1998 and I will not apologize about it. Not in this entry. Not in the next one. Not in any of them.
I am working on the entry for Tuesday, October 13, 1998 next. It will not have the sprinkler. It will not have the brownie with crystallized sugar. But it WILL have other things, things I have not catalogued yet, and I am asking you in advance to just trust the process. The process is me. The process loves you. The process is also extremely tired and will be going to bed after one more paragraph.
~*~ thanks for coming to my field guide ~*~
“dude” what, Brennan. Use your WORDS. This is a comment box, not a grunt.
i was going to say “dude this is sweet but maybe go outside” but you’re going to be mad either way so
I WENT OUTSIDE. I WENT OUTSIDE TO THE PORCH IN 1998 AND THAT IS HOW I HAVE THIS ENTRY. GO READ A BOOK BRENNAN. GO READ ONE.
i did NOT yell FINE four times. it was twice maybe. but otherwise this is accurate and i’m crying a little at work, thanks for nothing <3
it was four times. i love you. it was four times. i love you. (and i love you. and i love you.) (those are the FINEs.)
Oh honey. I remember that sprinkler too. The brass fitting was original to the house, 1971. I have a piece of it in a coffee can in the garage if you ever want to see it. — Linda I.
MRS. IVERSON. I would like to see the coffee can. I would like to see it very much. Please. I will bring banana bread. I will bring TWO banana breads.
those were probably just clouds tho
LEAVE.
okay yeah fair
i lived on cedarbrook from 96 to 99. lower part of the cul de sac, the house with the wagon wheel out front. buster was a GOOD dog. that sprinkler scared the daylights out of me i thought it was a gas leak. thank you for writing this. i didn’t know anybody else remembered.
i am openly sobbing. THE WAGON WHEEL HOUSE. you were real, you ARE real, please email me, i have so many questions about the rest of the block, i have a whole entry planned for the cul-de-sac for SOME tuesday in 1997 and i need a co-author and i need it to be you
i forgave you for the groaning. eventually. — M
brennan i KNOW this is you. mort died in 2001. please.
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dude